


A Mighty Roar

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Community: bigbangbigbang, F/M, Gen, Jurassic Park AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 00:32:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The entrepreneur, he was a prodigy, now a dreamer.<br/>The geneticist, she turned the impossible to life.<br/>The engineer, he built an island, the vet, she mended long bones.<br/>The ranger, she kept a gun by her side.<br/>The lawyer, he knew from the start.<br/>The programmer, he built a trapdoor in code.<br/>The palaeobotanist, he carved out leaves, the palaeontologist, he found an egg.<br/>The mathematician, she spent her life playing bluff.<br/>And the many things that should be dead, they opened their jaws and thumped their legs to the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Jurassic Park AU/Jurassic Park fusion. Written for the 2012 big bang big bang. Many thanks to weasleytook for the beta.
> 
> Don't miss the gorgeous [Mix + Art](http://fujiidom.livejournal.com/183556.html) by fujiidom!

The legal proceedings following the break-up of Century Genetic Applications, Inc. were played out over a ten-month period between January 28 and November 13, 2015. After initial interest from the tech media and business industries had run its course—about six weeks in the broadsheets and journals—things quietly shifted to the background, and the whole thing became nothing more than another tale of a promising venture going belly up in a still limping post-GFC world. Cenetic had its doubters and critics, but by then they had more pressing things to occupy themselves with, and the company, with its remaining stakeholders, ended its days in a darkened boardroom, bankrupt and signed away. 

There were rumors, of course, as to what had happened to cause this end, and why. Even officially, where such dealings are normally clear cut, the administrators representing the small group of start-up investors were choked with multiple non-disclosure agreements, and found the legal team representing Cenetic, Gablehauser and Siebert of Los Angeles, to be increasingly tight-lipped in their co-operation. In fact, the firm kept hold of the company assets long after the official time period was up; particularly, and most stoically, those of Cenetic's enigmatic founder, Wil Wheaton. 

Unofficially, the rumors were without number. In the blogosphere wildly conjectural third and forth- hand accounts abounded, but were either ignored or waved off with a bland company line. 

One account, that of Gablehauser and Siebert junior partner Stuart Bloom, was considered with particular interest. Bloom was known to have been a personal friend of Wheaton's, though to that score he offered up little detail. It is noted that he refused several times on record to speak of his client in an unprofessional capacity; much as he did for fellow attorney Rajesh Koothrappali, whose disappearance in August of the previous year, along with Wheaton himself and seven other Cenetic employees during a routine site inspection at the company's research facility off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, soon became an unsolved mystery of its own. 

 

-

 

Midday, Fort Baum, Montana. The sun, hidden for the better part of the morning behind a thick layer of cloud, was now high and clear in the sky, and as he reached for the field kit that had been set out neatly on a canvas blanket beneath his bent knees, Sheldon Cooper reflected that it may have been a good idea to bring that extra bottle of water after all. It was hotter than hell out here in the open, not a lick of shade to darken the endless monochrome of the bare rock. He wiped a bandana over his forehead, collecting sweat and sand. He could even picture it, sitting nice and chilled in their tiny fridge-freezer back at camp. There'd been a tuna salad sandwich in there, too, now he thought about it, which he'd also forgotten. Well, so runs the pursuit of science. Nothing he could do about it now, he decided, quickly pushing aside the moment of regret to concentrate instead on the work in careful miniature beneath his hands, to the fine strokes of his brush; to the bones he was unearthing. 

This was not a perfect specimen—they would be lucky to find anything so complete in this corner of the vast site—but a find was still a find, and in his opinion nothing, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, should ever be thought unworthy of attention. He considered this a basic function of the palaeontologic field. His grad students might be quick to scoff at his singular focus, calling him rigid, accusing him of not knowing what adventure really was, but these were kids who took off for the weekend to throw themselves down churning rivers and scorched-dry canyons. The long hours put into a meticulously organized and maintained dig were...well. Maybe he was hitting middle age prematurely, or was simply conforming to the genes passed on to him through the long line of studious men and woman down the generations of his Texas name, but he couldn't help shaking his head at the world around him. To wonder if he was the only one left who really cared, the only one who—

His phone beeped.

With a sigh he put his weight on one elbow, fished out the device from his pocket and thumbed at the screen. 

_Hey Sheldon!_

Just that, two words. He clucked with annoyance. How many times did he have to tell Leonard that cellular coverage, though vastly improved in the last few years so that even the most remote desert mesa was not without its own Twitter feed, was still a dent in their carefully rationed budget, and if he must be contacted, his colleague should, for want of a better phrase, get his ass to the damn point.

On the other hand, even if there were a one in a trillion chance that he was needed for something, Sheldon was transparently unable to ignore it. So he entered _?_ and hit send.

Eight and a half seconds, then: _Need you back here._

He shook his head, punching in letters rapidly.

_Can't. Juvenile Maia. Very delicate stage._

No reply. Good. Just as he suspected, trivial nonsense. One of the students with a rock shaped like Lincoln's nose, or something equally baffling. 

The phone rang. Loudly. Sheldon jumped, lighting fast reflexes the only thing stopping him from falling into a small pile of skeleton. He swore lavishly in German and barked, "Yes?"

"And hello to you, too," said Leonard's voice. 

"What do you want, Dr. Hofstadter?"

It was a tendency of Sheldon's to revert to proper titles when irritated. Which was most of the time, really. 

"I would _like_ you to come back. If it's at all convenient."

"You know that's impossible. This is an incredibly sound specimen, and I'm going to be at least another couple hours. Whatever it is those kids have found," he said, "you're going to have to deal with it yourself, okay?"

There was a long pause. He could hear mutterings in the background, a radio crackling. Good lord, but it was hot. He reached for his bandana again, twisting it around his neck until the knot sat flush beneath his chin. This of course immediately made him want to rip it away; he got as far as hooking a thumb into the cloth when Leonard's voice reappeared. 

"Sheldon, those bones have been in that rock since the dawn of forever. Another hour's not going to hurt anyone. Now pull that tarp closed and come back to camp, or I'll...I'll eat this quite delicious looking tuna sandwich."

And with that, Leonard hung up.

Grumbling to himself, Sheldon clambered to his feet, patting at his shirt pocket until his fingers landed on a pair of sunglasses. He looked down to the shallow valley, raised the glasses to his face but didn't put them on. The temporary buildings, the tents and vehicles of their desert home, sat like a mirage in the distance, reflecting light with eye-piercing vibrancy. He blinked as the afterimage flashed onto his eyelids, and was about to turn back and collect his gear when he caught sight of a figure standing outside the main tent. 

The figure waved, raising an arm, indicating north, to the sky. Sheldon turned to look just as his ears picked up a new sound, a rhythmic thumping, faint at first then louder as it broke through the clouds. It was a helicopter. 

They had company.

 

-

 

It seemed to take an agonizing length of time for their guest to land. They stood beneath an awning, eyes shielded from the whirling dust, watching as the chopper dipped low, hovered, rose up again, then finally settled down level. The noise was immense; it was like being trapped in a broom closet with a very small hurricane. Sheldon could only give a silent nod of thanks to the habit he had cultivated over many years of fieldwork of securing any exposed dig to a point where it could practically endure a nuclear attack. Or at least, a moderately ferocious storm. He almost wished for one, if only to get out of this dreary meeting. 

After a minute or so the rotor slowed and the cabin door opened. A man in a suit clambered out, clutching a briefcase. He caught sight of Sheldon and Leonard, gave a small wave, and began to pick his way across the soft ground. 

Unimpressed, Sheldon glanced over, and then, more pointedly, to his watch.

"This is a waste of time," he said.

"Now, now." Leonard spoke through his teeth, smiling in the man's direction. He waved back. "Play nice."

"Okay. I can do that. But I'll let you in on a little secret, Leonard. I believe everyone has a place and a role on this planet. And wealthy, faceless philanthropists who fund digs and University professors should, in my opinion, stay that way."

There was a pause. Leonard just stared at him. "What way?" he asked.

"Faceless." Sheldon tutted. "Pay attention."

"Right, I see. And does that same theory apply to their lawyers?" Without waiting for a reply, Leonard stepped forward and stuck out his hand. "Hi, welcome! It's Rajesh, right?"

The man nodded brightly. "It is, it is. Except only my parents call me that. Well, and my sister, when she's annoyed with me, but who's counting. It's Raj, please." He spoke in a pleasant British accent, smiling at them both. 

Sheldon gazed back, not moving. He waited to be acknowledged first, before nodding a stiff hello. "Dr. Cooper."

"Raj Koothrappali. I'm with Gablehauser and Siebert."

"Yes, Mr. Koothrappali, I'm well aware of who you are." 

"Then I should say the same. Your reputation precedes you, Doctor." Raj laughed nervously, and glanced at Leonard. "That is, er, the both of you..."

Sheldon shoved his hands in his pockets. He had visions of this going on forever, unending pleasantries circling around a nonexistent point. "Look, I apologize for appearing rude," he said, only half lying, "but I have a very exciting find that's close to full excavation, and as much as I enjoy some good old fashioned mutual admiration when dealing with members of the legal fraternity, I'd much sooner be out there than—"

He broke off. In the last few seconds as he'd been speaking something new had appeared in the lawyer's expression, as if the stumbling disposition had been hurriedly tucked away, replaced with the clear focus of a person who had anticipated such a reaction, and knew perfectly well how to respond. 

"Dr. Cooper, forgive me. I know what your work means to you. But my client is an influential man. And he rather insists that I speak to the two of you in person. So..." Raj tapped a finger to the briefcase, and nodded to the interior of the tent. "Shall we?" 

 

-

 

Of course, the first thing Sheldon did when they had settled on three uncomfortable chairs, and once Leonard had hastily cleared the table of journals, geological charts and month old catalogues, was to immediately get up again, walk to the tiny kitchen, and say over one shoulder, "You don't mind if I eat while you talk, Raj? No? Carry on, then, I'll just be here, exploring the refrigerator."

He could almost hear the exasperation crackle on Leonard's face. He ignored it. It was like water off his back, something he'd grown used to after more than a decade spent working together. "Ah, there you are," Sheldon murmured, unwrapping the sandwich. He inspected the lettuce, deemed it to be still crisp and therefore consumable, and wandered back to the table.

"Wil Wheaton doesn't just spring random lawyers on his hard working projects without prior notice," he said, chewing thoughtfully. "I mean you people normally make appointments in order to make other appointments. Which usually turn out to be a request for something almost completely random, like the gestation period of African ostriches, or whether I happen to take vitamin B supplements." Sheldon gestured to the briefcase Raj had placed on the table, still unopened. "So I assume...this...is something along the same lines?"

He swallowed. Two pairs of eyes were staring up at him. 

"What?" 

"Are you finished?" Leonard folded his arms. "I think there's about four hours of daylight left, and I wouldn't want you to stop and draw breath before then if you didn't absolutely have to."

They shared a look. There was once a time when Sheldon's grasp of sarcasm was pretty much nonexistent, and while this had improved over the years, if there was one thing that a life spent working at the top of his field had taught him, it was that sometimes it was just simpler to revert to silence and admit defeat. Naturally he considered this method of keeping the peace to be fairly unimaginative, no matter how unsubtly Leonard rolled his eyes behind those glasses. After all, he was the holder of two doctorates, not to mention his mother's nails to the ground streak of stubbornness, and he would stay to his last held breath under the belief that to back away from an argument, no matter how petty, was always the wrong choice.

Still. It struck him that now might be one of those times, so he sat down.

Raj, who had been observing all this silent communication with the faintest of smiles, turned now to the briefcase and clicked open the locks, taking out papers, several maps, and what looked to be architectural drawings. He spread the larger pieces out over the table, and handed them each a bound volume, a sort of mockup folder scattered with tabs and colored memo cards. On the cover was the Cenetic logo, the familiar red and blue helix design they had seen on every fax, email circular, business card and company tweet since funding had been agreed upon from this very new, and very media-shy genetics outfit, headed up by that all-round magnet to controversy, multi-billionaire Wil Wheaton. It had been Wheaton's interest in dinosaurs, which he claimed, quite innocently and truthfully, to be a hangup from childhood he'd never been able to shake, that had seen Sheldon's department at UC Berkeley acquire new tools and the means to keep hot weather digs such as this one open for longer, not to mention being able to lure the best students. The advantages, the autonomy, it outweighed anything else. As uneasy as it made him feel, he knew this sort of philanthropy would always be a part of their work, and he had grown to count on it. 

And yet Sheldon had never met Wheaton. Neither had Leonard, and it was Leonard who tended to 'deal with the dollars', as Sheldon liked to put it; and after eighteen months, he would have thought that one of these private helicopter charters might finally contain the man himself, rather than a proxy in a flashy suit. Not that he desired in any way to meet and greet; Wheaton was as unfamiliar and inscrutable as his company logo was blandly recognizable. It was this fact above all else that most annoyed Sheldon. 

No...not annoy. It was closer to an itch he couldn't scratch. The way they were both bound to a face that neither of them really knew. And if he were honest he would admit that yes, there was also resentment in knowing he could never have achieved as much as he had without such a benefactor, as if every small success came with a bitter taste that wouldn't wash away. Probably not the healthiest way to conduct a business relationship, but then Sheldon had yet to find any that was.

He flicked through the pages. The typeface was dense, the language overtly technical. It looked like a manual for a very specialized piece of lab equipment, but with slightly out-of-place overtones, as if that piece of lab equipment happened to also double as a guesthouse, or underground bunker. 

"And this is..." asked Sheldon, turning the book over and scanning the index for clues. 

Raj spread out his hands. "Mr. Wheaton's latest project. Well, I say latest, but it has really been in incubation for some ten or so years, curbed in the early days by the fact that the technology was not yet there, the potential he was looking for elusive to nonexistent. In the years since he has had to, how shall I put it...apply new thinking to the science."

Both of Leonard's eyebrows were trying their best to meet in the middle. "Incubation?" he repeated.

A smile tweaked at Raj's lips. "So to speak."

" _What_ new thinking?" Sheldon set the pages down with a thud and returned to his sandwich. "I don't like vague gobbledygook, Mr. Koothrappali, especially when it affects my work."

"So I've found."

Was it in the legal code somewhere, Sheldon wondered, that all lawyers be as purposely obscure as possible, every moment of every day? "To be brutally honest with you, all I see here is a lesson in speculative chaos." He paused to examine a small, oddly shaped radio collar. "And what appears to be a leftover screen prop from a Michael Bay movie..."

"Sheldon." Leonard's gaze was sharp, the warning clear in his voice.

But Sheldon ignored him. Something half-hidden under Raj's shirtsleeve had caught his attention. "Show me that," he said.

The lawyer pushed it across the table. A small object, a fragment of something broken. Sheldon picked it up, turning it over in his palm. It was crisp and smooth. 

"You're kidding." Leonard's eyes narrowed. "That's..."

"This is an eggshell," said Sheldon. "Of a dinosaur."

Raj nodded. "That's right."

"It's real."

"Very real."

Sheldon gazed at Raj, gazed at him hard until he thought he saw something click. 

"You came with an invitation." He wasn't asking this time; he knew. "To where?"

"To meet with my client. He thinks it's about time you saw what he's been putting his money into. That new thinking...it has built him a little place, you see." Raj leaned back, smoothed down the line of his collar, a look of knowing on his handsome face. "I think you'll find it most interesting."

 

-

 

Rajesh stepped out to make a phone call, and after about fifteen seconds of gazing solidly into the middle distance, Sheldon scraped his chair back, and he too left the table. 

For a moment it was quiet, and very still, and all that could be heard was the ticking of a clock propped up against some shelving. Leonard, still sitting, took off his glasses and wiped a smudge off the lens. He didn't put them back on, though, choosing instead to watch the world in a comforting blur. Sometimes when things got too hectic, or when Sheldon became too overbearing in his need to compulsively align the entire universe to his every whim, Dr. Leonard Hofstadter, palaeobotanist and weekend chess enthusiast, would retire to his small corner of the makeshift lab in the adjoining tent and quite literally stare at a wall. There was nothing remotely relaxing about it; the inevitable headache usually came in under a minute; but it meant he was forced to stop and think. Or not. Either way the result was the same. 

Clarity. 

If everything the lawyer was alluding to was even a tiny bit true, was even a millionth of a microscopic fraction in the vicinity of proven fact—then clarity was what they were going to need. And a hell of a lot of it. 

He took a breath, held it for a few seconds, and put his glasses back on. The first thing to come into focus was the plastic wrapping of Sheldon's sandwich. He thought back to the exchange they'd had. There'd been some threat to eat it himself. Probably a good thing he was such a passive adversary, he thought. He couldn't stand tuna. 

"Christ alive," he murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

"Don't be ironic, Leonard, it doesn't suit you." Sheldon breezed inside and stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips. He exhaled loudly. "He's out there now, talking to some guy who's apparently holding a charter plane for us. This is ridiculous. It's...it's bordering on fantasy!"

"Well, I'd agree with you, but I'm too busy applauding you recognizing irony."

Sheldon gave him a withering stare. Leonard sighed and waved him away, rising from the chair to stretch out the kinks in his arms. Outside the tent, some of the kids were coming in along the tracks, carrying electronic equipment and various other pieces of gear, talking, getting ready to pack up the for the day. High spirits. He knew how they felt.

Dinosaurs, he thought. They were fantasies too, once, before the first scientific words had made them real. 

"Aren't you curious?" asked Sheldon, quietly now. There was something tight in his voice, as if he didn't want it said out loud. He came over and leaned against the awning, one hand lifted to block the sharp angle of the sun. Together they watched Raj as the lawyer turned in a slow circle, the phone still held tight to his ear. 

"Yes," said Leonard.

"Me too."

It was not a hard decision to make.

 

-

 

There was enough daylight to take the chopper back to town that same evening, however for this to happen they had to be packed and ready to go in half an hour, or else the pilot would have to come back the next morning. It was Raj's assumption, perhaps a naive one, that they might like to avail themselves of the first option and save a little company dime, as he jokingly put it. But Sheldon's complaints of needing at least a night to prepare were so immediately vocal that Leonard was forced to step into neutral ground before things got even more awkward than they already were. Raj took the hint graciously, accepting the offer of a bed with multiple assurances of how much Mr. Wheaton was looking forward to seeing his star dinosaur experts. 

"Well, I'm actually a palaeobotanist—" Leonard began. 

"Oh." Raj looked confused. "So, what, you dig up old...leaves?"

There was a long pause. While Leonard hid a sigh, Sheldon drifted past with a toothbrush in hand. "Just nod, it'll be less painful," he said in an undertone, leaving Leonard to wonder if it would simply be better for all involved if he went and stared at a wall again.

 

-

 

The morning they woke to was vivid and clear, promising another fiercely hot day, but once inside the helicopter Sheldon felt goosebumps rise on his forearms. He didn't like flying, not one bit, and as they gained height his hands kept returning to the safety harness, because quite frankly it didn't seem at all sufficient a means of keeping him in one piece if indeed they were to catch and spin into a great fireball out here in the wilds. Eventually Leonard shot him a look and Sheldon relented, turning to the cabin window to stare at the rolling country, far below. 

There were to be a few stops along the way, Raj told them, mostly to refuel and take in some supplies. They would be changing to a private jet in Los Angeles, where they would also be picking up two more passengers, one being Wil Wheaton himself, and from there would pass over the remainder of California direct to San Jose. 

"This mysterious second, is it someone we know?" asked Leonard, but Raj was busy chatting to the pilot and didn't hear him. Meanwhile Sheldon shrugged and closed his eyes. He was still fighting sleep from the early start, and had about as much interest in small talk as he had in needing to know where their lawyer friend had acquired his dashing silk tie. Soon he fell asleep, his worries kept quiet by the thrum of the engine.

 

-

 

"Welcome everybody! Dr. Cooper, Dr. Hofstadter, I'm so glad you were able to join us. I hope the ride wasn't too rough on you. That chopper's not as quiet as some of the newer models, and I've been meaning to replace it for ages now—but it's sort of like throwing away a pair of favorite tennis shoes. Hard to do."

Wil Wheaton wore black jeans, a white t-shirt beneath a grey jacket, and a smile on his bearded face as broad as the Californian sky. As soon as they had landed he had been at the cabin door, swinging it open and offering his hand to help them down, his greeting made loud over the roar of activity surrounding them. But, despite the air of casualness, they'd had barely time to shake hands before being marched onto a very luxurious and discreetly staffed private jet. Money, Sheldon thought, really did buy one most of anything.

"Uh, Mr. Wheaton," said Leonard, as they found their seats, "are you able to tell us anything more about this place of yours? You have to...well, you have to forgive us for being slightly confused..."

"Wil."

"Excuse me?"

"Leonard, Leonard. It's going to be a long couple of days if we have to go around offering up our name, rank and serial number every time we need the key to the bathroom, don't you think?"

"Right...what?"

Wheaton clapped him on the shoulder. "I _mean_ ," he said, with a grin. "Call me Wil." He turned to face the others. "Guys, look, there will be plenty of time for questions, I assure you. Now please, I have staff here with very little to do apart from pour you the most fantastic coffee that I'm allowed to have brewing at forty thousand feet, so...sit, make yourselves comfortable. We'll be in the air again in about fifteen minutes. I'm sorry it can't be sooner but that's the FAA for you. Feel free to direct all complaints to my legal representative here." 

And with that he stepped out of the cabin, leaving Sheldon, Leonard and Raj to look at one another in silence

Raj was the first to speak. "Oh, and by the way, he didn't really mean that last bit. About the FAA. Believe you me, I have enough on my plate as it is without the national air regulatories getting their curtails in a knot." He went to the back of the cabin to begin unpacking his things. Within moments he had a laptop out and was typing fast.

With a sigh, Sheldon folded himself into his seat. It was over the wheelbase, which he normally couldn't stand, but for the life of him he just wanted to sit and at this point would've happily taken a rattan highchair on a barge down the Yukon. 

"Sheldon." Leonard's voice drifted over from the opposite window. A stewardess with attractive features and a quiet, patient smile had materialized from nowhere and was standing between them in the narrow aisle. "They have chamomile tea. You want one?"

No, Sheldon didn't want chamomile tea. He wanted to know what sort of rabbit hole his brain had fallen into when he'd agreed to partake in this sidetrip to nowhere. So he'd seen a shell. So what of it? It could be anything. What sort of scientist was he if he hadn't at least stood up and demanded proper answers the minute some childhood flash of excitement had manifested itself like a rude gesture he had no means of controlling. What sort of idea was it to come all this way at the beck and call of someone who wanted to be best friends on sight—

"Wow, boys, we got a party going on here, or what?"

In the time it had taken Sheldon to agonize over the last day and every moment from here on in, Wheaton had returned. And by his side, sporting a messy braid and a t-shirt with the words I LIVE TO SING, was someone he had never seen in person, who wouldn't know him in turn from the vast galaxy to an empty room, but someone who was so immediately familiar that Sheldon had to force himself to look the other way in order to hide the realization he was sure was flashing in neon lights across his face. Of course Wheaton would bring her. Of course. She was only the poster girl for a generation of women in an era that had fielded men to the forefront of every achievement and prize; the voice that called out to daytime TV and the face that struck poses for magazines hungry for brains and beauty. No matter that her opinions were wild, or that she made whole mountains of chaos from fact. She had ideas and Wheaton wanted to hear them. 

She was, in short, every cell and every fracture of DNA his complete opposite...and there was pitifully little he could do about it. 

The stewardess, perhaps sensing his mood from the fact that he was suddenly trying to stare lasers through the bulkhead, placed a cup on his tray table before the unhappiness could morph into stormy angst. He murmured thanks without making a sound, and slumped a little deeper, feeling the first notes of the engines start up from beneath his feet. Despite his best intentions, his eyes kept returning to the braid, the end of which she was now touching absently with dark-polished nails. 

If she noticed his reaction she hid it well. The way her eyes flickered his way, though, he suspected that situation was not going to last.

"This," said Wil Wheaton, "is Dr. Malcolm." 

"You left out the most important bit of my name there, guy. I hope you don't do that to all the girls you swing onto private jets." She popped the piece of gum in her mouth and gave them all a wave. When she smiled it was if her whole face turned bright. "It's Penny."

Penny Malcolm stepped down the aisle, greeting them in turn, and when she got to Sheldon she said hello, once, and took the seat behind him before he could respond. He heard the click of a seatbelt being snapped tight, and Leonard's voice, small talk, wondering if she'd had far to come...but then the wheels began to move, the engine kicking up a gear. If she gave an answer, it was lost to the noise.

 

-

 

The words may have been spoken lightly, but anyone who knew her well was all too aware that she took absolute pride in her name.

Her mother had wanted to name her Cally—Caroline—after a great aunt who'd lived out east in Knox County, Nebraska, and had grown up in a house full of boys to end up practically running the town. But in the late eighties she'd had a falling out with that side of the family, and grew closer to her husband as she grew distant in her pregnancy. Her father liked the name but thought a few altered letters had a better ring to it, and so Penny was born.

She was what the teachers liked to call a directionless child. Nobody went and told her what to do or where to go. She waited partway through high school for a ways forward, because it seemed like you had to go where your parents told you, or at least, that was how her small group of friends made it out to be, what with their ranch clubs and pony shows, blue ribbons and smiles from daddy. But still nothing came. It was a strange blow, disappointing for a girl who had ambition, who felt it so keenly that it kept her awake through whole nights. She couldn't give a name to what this feeling was, or where she wanted to see it end. Instead she counted the shell-shaped ridges in the plaster ceiling above her bed, made patterns from those numbers, and in the early mornings during summer, when leading out their string of cows to the back pastures, she would cut open the bales of hay and see those same sequences and lines in the heads of grass as they fell, cross-bladed, to the ground. Something pricked at her skin after that, and when she shocked her teachers by proving equations from sight it occurred to her that it might never have been ambition at all, but a void instead, one she'd seen open and now knew how to close.

That was her safety, the thick lined compartments that held the laws she learnt to rely upon and to trust. Laws made up of strange symbols: plus and minus, division sharp as the speed at which she worked in her head. Messy, tangled abstraction. On the outside she let herself go wild, smoke yards and in college get sky high with the best of the best, because she always knew she could beat them. 

She was a rock star in a dusty sphere. She bit her nails to the quick and made her bed with odd sheets. 

It was at a seminar at MIT where she first met Wheaton. She was on her way back west, and told him that for all the brilliance and bullshit she'd put up with in that school, she wanted nothing more than to get out of there. He'd bought her iced tea at some falling-to-bits antiquarian bookstore in the city, and asked if she could look at a flock of birds and pick out the one with the strongest wings. 

His face was interesting to her. She could see immediately how smart he was, how he was used to getting to every place he wanted to be. He said he was working on something: a kind of game changing something, he called it, with a grin. Hollywood flash talk, she thought. They flirted gamely; she told him he needed to slow down. 

That was seven months ago, and every day since, Penny had wondered. 

 

-

 

A humid and heavy sky met them at San Jose. 

That, and another helicopter.

"Will the joys of modern transportation never end?" asked Sheldon. "What next? Are we to finish the day in a mine cart?"

Raj was the only one who laughed at this; Leonard pretended to ignore him, and their new acquaintance Dr. Malcolm seemed more interested in reading something on her phone. Sheldon had the height advantage of being able to peer easily over her shoulder, and it was only politeness that stopped him from demanding to know why she needed a brownie recipe in the middle of an airstrip. 

Meanwhile, Wheaton had jumped ahead to greet the pilot, a short, muscular man wearing a Cenetic baseball cap. He appeared flustered and stony-faced, and kept shaking his head at Wheaton. But when they came within earshot his expression turned pleasant, and he welcomed them with a nod.

"Ah, yeah, I should mention that," said Wheaton, angling his head toward the phone in Penny's hand as they climbed into the cabin. "You're going to find that fairly useless out where we're going. A drawback of isolation, I'm afraid. We're working on getting the network up and running, of course, but it's still in the bare bones stages. That applies for most of everything."

Sheldon, who was slightly more concerned by the fact that his safety harness was doing its level best to turn into the Gordian knot, turned a portion of his frown in Wheaton's direction. "I assume at some point you will expand on what exactly that _everything_ is? You have to forgive me for being curious. Call it a scientist's fault." 

But Wheaton didn't hear this; he was busy talking to the pilot again, and eventually Sheldon untangled the nylon straps and pulled them tight. 

"You know," he said to Leonard, who was seated next to him, "I can’t help thinking that somewhere out there there's a parallel universe in which that man is either my mortal enemy," and here he paused, lost in thought as the engine kicked into life and they rose and turned nose to the ocean, "or my dearest of friends."

 

-

 

His first thought was that it couldn't be real. He would, of course, later blame the sheer whimsy of this reaction to the teeth-chattering turbulence they were subjected to during the helicopter ride from the coast out to this tiny speck in the Pacific. It struck him that the closest thing he could compare it to was something from a 1950s pop science fiction novella, cast neatly in the shadow of Jules Verne. 

The island rose to greet them from the tumbling ocean, top heavy and sheer on all sides, green peaks scattering birds out to sea. 

"Jesus Mary." Penny's voice came over the mic, loud in his ears. "You'd better have King Kong down there, or I'll be asking for my money back."

 

-

 

Sheldon Cooper stepped onto ground that was wet and sodden with rain, and he breathed in deeply. The air had a sweet sensation to it that was pleasant at first, but all too quickly he felt a burn at the back of his throat and a familiar taste coating his tongue. Though he might claim rightly to live a scientist's life, there would always be some aspects of the natural world that he preferred not to experience first hand. 

"Sulphur." He coughed into the crook of his elbow. "Ugh, lovely." 

"Yep," said Wheaton. "Once upon a time, this place would've been spewing lava every which way but down. You'll get used to it." He shrugged gamely, a friendly gesture like a salesman accepting all blame, and nodded to where two brightly painted Jeeps were pulling up. Wheaton turned, raised his voice to include the others. "Okay, here's our ride, guys. Hop in." 

They drove down a rough-cut dirt road into jungle, the overhead canopy so immediately dense that the effect was like entering a tunnel. Sheldon winced, not for the first time, as they hit a pothole, causing one of his shoulders to bump against Leonard and the other against the passenger door. Wheaton and Raj were in the leading Jeep, and through the windscreen of their own he could just make out the angle of the road ahead. He couldn't help feeling that they'd done little but follow and be led since sunrise. It was not a feeling he enjoyed. 

A few minutes passed in this way, before the trees began to space out, the scenery change. He heard the new call of birds, and what he first thought were monkeys, a low hoot, like a drum. But when he craned his head he couldn't see anything except leaves and sky. 

Then the road broke into open field, and the change from dark to light was so sudden that he had to blink several times so his eyes could adjust. To the right, at the bend of a hill, a tree stood tall in stark profile, casting a shadow across the grass. 

The Jeep in front slowed; a moment later he felt their driver touch the brakes. 

Sheldon stared out the window. He stopped blinking.

It was no tree.

In the front passenger seat Penny Malcolm was fiddling with her hair, sweeping aside loose strands that had fallen across her eyes. She was sweating, and waved a hand in front of her face. "Damn, it's hot." With a sigh she twisted her shoulders around, looking them over with a crooked expression. "You guys are real talkers, aren't you? Oh well, I guess we'll have plenty of time to get to know one another, seeing as he's got us here the whole weekend. Except I'm pretty sure I'll only need half that to drum into him what he can't seem to get into that ego-laced head of his—" 

In a single movement he had jammed his body against the door and was stumbling out of the car. He could feel his heart thud, the heat of sudden shock pouring through him as he took two, three steps back, almost tripping onto the road. His eyes never left the sky. There came the sound of two more doors slamming shut as Leonard and Penny followed him out.

"What the hell, Sheldon..." began Leonard.

But Sheldon stopped him. "Look up," he said.

 _It was no tree_. It was the long, languid, blood pumping neck of a creature that had died out near to sixty-five million years ago. 

There, not thirty feet away. 

They were standing in the shadow of a dinosaur. 

 

-

 

"Now see, _that's_ what I call an introduction," said Wheaton. He smacked his hands together and shot a grin at the rear view mirror, to where Raj Koothrappali was sitting. "Fan-freaking-tastic. Gets me every time."

Raj nodded but didn't reply. His briefcase was propped open between his knees, he had one hand inside and was trying to extract a paper copy without disturbing everything else he'd carefully arranged. They had resumed their ride down the dirt road. 

"When do you expect to get the grading equipment back here, Mr. Wheaton?" he asked mildly. "Only I seem to recall that you'd signed off this area some five months ago. Same with..." He paused as they sped over another rough section, looked down and realized that his hand was gripping the exact piece he wanted, though it was now crushed slightly and had several fingernail marks at one edge. He smoothed it out and ran his eyes down the list. "Same with, uh, the pylons in the smaller dactyl cage, the air ducts in the nursery complex, and several other items which I'm sure you are well aware have fallen very much behind schedule. Plus, I've been told by your head ranger, Ms. Winkle—several times, in fact, but who's counting—that the electric fencing leading down to the river is _still_ tacky in places, and the orthies have taken to chewing on the connecting ties. Apparently they like the color blue." 

Wheaton waved a hand. "Details. Rough edges in an otherwise brilliant diamond, my friend." He turned to the driver and said, "Take the next right, would you? I think they're running cable down the maintenance blocks, and I'd rather not set Wolowitz on edge while we have actual company..." Then he glanced back into the mirror, smiling easily. "Diamonds. Things the world stands in awe of. Five, ten years, you come back here, tell me I'm wrong. Hell, you can even tell me now."

"Okay," said Raj slowly, "I'll skip right by that metaphor for a moment and instead ask you this: are you aware of what those details actually mean? Here's an example. That electrician you fired last month, Larry Enberg, did you know he was going to some journalist or other with a full and frighteningly undisclosed account of everything he'd seen and done over five months of cable routing through some extremely sensitive areas? I had to fly to Long Island to talk him down. And then, just as I think I'm getting somewhere, Gablehauser gets a phone call in the middle of the ninth hole at Maui from someone high up who knows this guy's damn mother! His mother, I might add, who very kindly made it clear to me that she will be taking the hatred of all lawyers everywhere to her grave. So I've got your PR people in one ear looking to squeeze a half-decent angle from this mess, and now my boss in the other asking me to get a handle on these _details_ before they start splitting like damn amoebas! So. This is not me telling you you're wrong, Mr. Wheaton. This is me telling you to listen." 

He jammed the briefcase shut, catching his thumb in the process. For a long moment there was no sound but the tires rolling over the gravel, and then Wheaton turned in his seat. He looked at Raj carefully.

"Feel better?" 

It wasn't teasing; there was something in his voice that reminded Raj of the serious, young entrepreneur he had met about five years ago, when the project first started getting some serious leverage. He knew that man was still there. It was just hard work getting through to him beneath all the layers of blitheness, the jokes, the thumps on tired shoulders and requests to _call me Wil_. 

"Listen, I understand where you're coming from," said Wheaton, when Raj didn't reply. "This is a hell of a thing to realize, and you, man—you've practically been there from the start. I know you get a lot of shit kicked your way. Anyone with less of a vision would've walked away long ago. I really do appreciate that."

Raj wasn't exactly sure if he had a vision. Or, if he did, whether it sat in the same realm as someone who for most of his adult life had hoarded his intelligence as if it had been under lock and key, only to let it fly with one brutal and astonishing achievement. 

"Yes, well, it's my job," he said quietly, glancing out the window just in time to see the sauropod lift its neck and gently rip the high branches of a tree. 

When he turned back Wheaton was still watching him, a knowing gaze only broken when the Jeep swept beneath a high arched gate. He felt the hum of fresh asphalt replacing the dirt, and saw that the tropical flowers which had been planted just a few months back were now sprouting in vivid color. Raj knew, having sighted the landscaping budget, that they weren't native to the island. Nothing spared, he thought. 

"Excellent," said Wheaton, and Raj couldn't tell whether this was directed at him, at everyone, or that his client was simply speaking to himself. He decided it didn't matter. 

They drove along the road, towards the main building.

 

-

 

One of the ceiling lights was flickering. A long fluorescent tube, high up in the corner. As she stood in the doorway, hands clasped around a mug of cooling tea, Amy Fowler considered the hours that had gone into designing every curve and corner of this building, and wondered how, in all those dollars and lucrative contracts, they had still managed to install basic fittings that fell apart so regularly that you could set your watch by them.

She stared a moment longer. It was almost calming. In an entirety perverse way, of course.

Her eyes were caught by a slight figure in the middle of the room. 

"Howard," she said, nodding.

"I know, I see it. I called maintenance. If nobody turns up in the next hour I'm breaking occupational health and safety protocol, stealing a damn step ladder and yanking out the bastard myself."

Howard Wolowitz punctuated this statement by twisting his neck and stretching both arms out. He looked rough, she thought. She wandered in and let the door close. "And you've been up now for...how long?" she asked. "You know these people aren't really going to change anything in his mind. He just wants to show off, now that us poor harried souls have become immune to it all."

"I've slept."

"Yeah?" Amy looked over, trying not to appear amused. "With a stack of printouts as your pillow and the tiny chipmunk blast from Kripke's headphones soothing you to the land of nod? Sounds very relaxing."

He shrugged. When she came closer and glanced over his shoulder she saw that he was looking at the map again. The map was a real time picture of what was happening throughout the island. It took up almost half of a large bench situated in the center of a bank of video surveillance monitors, and was the focal point of the control room. From this place Howard could oversee everything and anything. Which was mostly good, but it also gave him about a hundred new things to stress about each day. No one could deny his brilliance as an engineer, no one could argue against the way he had managed to pull the logistics together on what was, really, a project of meteor-impact proportions. 

But he was very good at forgetting himself, of that small thing known as down time. His own wife could tell that to anyone. Quite easily, actually, seeing as she worked for Wheaton too.

Still, it was hardly Amy's place to throw such claims around. She practically lived in her laboratory. She was simply very, very good at ignoring her own life, choosing instead to carefully analyse those around her. Enigmatic bosses; married, bickering couples; shy lawyers—and Amy. As a bright, young geneticist, she could have had her pick of options after her doctorate, and she chose the private sector, not for the money—which was good as well as a good excuse, allowing her to send her mother away on endless vacations so as to spare Amy of the maternal grievance over her disciplined and somewhat monastic life—but because of the force behind it. The senior employees of Cenetic all had stories to tell, and Dr. Amy Fowler's was the longest running. 

Not that Wheaton minded her any more than he did the chef who cooked him barbeque at his private quarters. Mutual distance lent itself to respect. She was happier that way.

"What are you working on, then?" asked Howard. He glanced at her hands. "The amazing hot liquid that never cools?"

Amy set the mug down. "I wish. No, it's EK9887. I think we're close to signing off on version 4. Only the third cycle. But this one's more robust, minimal UV reaction. I think he'll be pleased."

This brought a half-smile to Howard's lips, that familiar precursor to sarcasm. She knew what he was thinking. Wheaton rarely noticed. He gave such free rein that to drill down into the minute specifics, like the impossibly fine changes Amy was talking about when she spoke of cycles and versions, it just wasn't part of the operation. That was Howard's place; that was Amy's. That was for the select few who had been given every opportunity, however lighting fast it had changed in the last years especially, and however strange and bewildering it was. Dinosaurs. Created and bred and raised. And living. It was enough to erase doubt in even the most ironclad skeptic. Amy knew this. She had been one herself.

Speaking of which...

"That them?" she asked, glancing at the map, where the two dots that had been moving for the last fifteen or so minutes in a gradual loop across the teardrop-shaped island had come to a stop outside the main building. 

"Yep. New blood, come to play and be shocked beyond measure." Howard rubbed his hands together, and raised his eyebrows. "That's what we do, right? That's our game?"

She thought: _You really do need sleep_. But all she did was shrug a little, and say, "Then I guess they'll be wanting something a bit stronger than cold tea."

 

-

 

All in all, they actually looked reasonably calm and rational for a group of people who had quite literally just had the impossible loom over them. 

"Come in, come in," said Wheaton, while Amy and Howard duly arranged themselves in the middle of the room, the smallest and most forgettable of welcoming committees. She thought their boss looked a little harried himself, but then she saw the suited figure of Raj step inside, arms folded tightly, and reassigned the adjective. She caught his eye and gave him a friendly nod. He nodded back, but didn't smile. 

The one with the glasses and hooded jacket was the first to offer his hand. There was something about him that was immediately calming; unlike his tall companion, who gave his name in the most perfunctory manner possible, his gaze darting birdlike around the room. She could see that his skin was pale around the lips and cheeks, his fingers absently playing with the buttons of his shirtsleeve. 

Then there was Penny. 

Amy tried not to stare at her. This was mostly difficult and she was mostly unsuccessful. Fortunately the mathematician seemed intent on shooting down Howard's full on charm assault; the rest of the time, her face was unreadable.

"I hope you had a pleasant trip," said Amy, when the conversation—what there was of it—hit a lull. 

"Oh..." Leonard nodded quickly. "Um, yes. Yes, very pleasant." 

This seemed to amuse Sheldon to no end. His colleague merely folded his arms and proceeded to examine the carpet. It looked like a familiar exchange, one that made her immediately curious as to their relationship. And they were so calm, she thought. Maybe it was only the barest of holds keeping a lid on what she was sure were dozens of questions they were dying to ask. Some they'd never really get answers for. Either way, it would be a long process getting there, more than one fly-in weekend could ever provide, that was for sure.

For Amy, this was something she could now only experience through those around her, always guessing what her own reaction might have been if she were put in the same position. Hers had been an incremental process; in a way, the end result had been no different than that first breakthrough, a string of letters on a digital readout, that kink in the sequence leading her to dial Wheaton's cell—this a man that she barely knew—and tell him there was a chance, just a chance, that something monumental had happened. That she could see where this was going. If he wanted it to. 

He hadn't said yes. He'd turned up in her lab the next day and tripled his offer. 

She watched him now; he had an eye on everyone, everything, moving about with an energy that seemed to almost fill the room. Whatever it was he was running on, Amy thought, taking up her mug and holding it against the white of her lab coat, hoping for a little warmth and finding none, she had a feeling that it only just ramping up. 

And then, almost as quickly as they had come in, the slightly shell-shocked group was ushered out again, Wheaton's voice trailing behind and loudly proclaiming an open kitchen and food for all. 

"Interesting bunch." Howard was back at the table, peering once again at the map. He spoke quietly and didn't look at her. "Think you can convince them we're not all pulling rabbits out of hats there, Amy?"

She glanced at the top of his head. "You mean we," she said, and left the room.

 

-

 

It was never his intention to be a success. From the time he could first shout out an argument or voice an opinion, he considered himself to be no more than an entertainer, juggling action figurines and juice boxes before he could keep two feet on a skateboard, taking on the role of the grand old showman while still in short pants and with baby fat blushing pink in his cheeks. Aged nine he announced to the family that his greatest hero was Henry Houdini, and it was his born duty to not only emulate this man, but one day better him. 

His mother’s favorite words were _Oh_ and _Wil_ , typically in that order. William’s Bazaar, she called his little act. His many cousins served as clowns and lions, willing victims and laughing critics; an audience when he had none. 

It was not success when he made his first million. It was not success when he rode out the worst shocks of the global financial crisis (both times round as the Greek crow flew, he would often point out) with his venture capitalists still on side and quietly whispering for more. It was trust. 

Looking now at the faces around the table and the expressions they held—Sheldon's steely and distrusting, Leonard's worn to the bone, and Penny's flat out amused—he acknowledged, albeit reluctantly, that this one might take a little longer to reach the dealbreaker stage. These three were coming in at the tail end when they hadn't been through the trials and failures and endless, debilitating long nights when he'd had his geneticist, his engineer, his star colleagues tell him over and again that he was wasting time, money, hope, good intentions. To an outsider with any modicum of sense, yes, it _was_ ridiculous. Hollywood science. A multi-billion dollar slight of hand. Wheaton was man enough to nod, laugh, say _yeah, I get it_. And he would follow that up with _but think about this..._

Because he knew better. He knew how to win 

As they ate, Wheaton spoke eloquently. It was a skill he had, and one that rarely failed him. He figured a working kitchen, well-lit and full of polished chrome, hanging pots and the like, set a casual enough of a backdrop; that he would be better listened to if he didn't stand before a static vid presentation to read from what was basically a press pack without the press. He knew his politics. This was a tough sell. He wanted to be raising an index finger over leftover roast beef and mustard with his jacket undone. A billionaire for the people, a man with a vision.

So he told them a story. The one about how they'd cloned dinosaurs.

When he finished speaking, he took a drink of water. It brought an air of reassurance to the gaping silence, which, by the way, he was getting damn good at predicting. But a piece of ice hit his bottom teeth, and he was forced to cough slightly through the punchline of "Any questions?"

Fortunately no one seemed to notice. Then Sheldon raised his hand.

"Dr. Cooper."

"Thank you. Yes, I have a question. It is in thirty-five parts."

Penny groaned. Wheaton shot her a frown. She eyeballed him back and flicked a scrap of lettuce across the table.

"Well, I say question," Sheldon went on, more to himself now, "but I suppose technically it's more of a combined group statement, one in which I believe I am speaking for my esteemed colleagues, too, when I say..." 

Wheaton swirled his glass, watching as the last of the ice melted away. "Yes?" 

"You need to take us back out there."


	2. Chapter 2

Leonard was worried.

This in itself was not unusual. He was a good worrier, and was well known for it. They were of the usual stock standard: he worried about his family (and being a constant disappointment), and his love life (or lack thereof). He worried about gas prices, soil erosion, the way global warming was still being shunted from one political party to another. He nearly pulled his hair out worrying about which member of the UC board of directors Sheldon was going to piss off next, as he tended to do on a seasonal basis every time he felt the university was neglecting their core values, much to the detriment of science. 

And ever since he'd looked into the small, dark eyes of that brachiosaurus, he could think of little else than what it meant, the implications behind it, and—on a level he knew to be selfish, which in itself was another thing to worry about—he wondered how on earth they could go back to their work after what they had just seen. 

"Don't be ridiculous," said Sheldon, as they were shepherded outside the front entrance to where two Jeeps were parked. According to the literature Leonard had read during one of the flights over, these were heavily customized hybrid electrics, significantly smaller than the gas models, still in the development stages and limited to two passengers each. And he was not exactly thrilled to see that they looked a lot like toys. "You think this changes anything?"

"God, Sheldon. It changes _everything_."

"Ah, but does it?"

Trying very hard not to sigh out loud, Leonard took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. It was hot, humid, he disliked the tropics at the best of times, and after travelling all day, quite frankly he felt like crap. Plus, he could pick Sheldon's moods like the weather, and knew instantly from the tone in his voice that they were going to be in for several hours of inexhaustible arguments. Unless...

"Hey, Raj, come ride with me, would you? We need to talk about, you know. The thing."

He steered the lawyer over to the front car. Raj stared at him blankly. 

"What?"

"The thing," said Leonard. 

During this exchange Sheldon had bent down to retie one of his shoelaces, and a small ways behind, Penny stood with one hand propped against her hip, her eyes turned away to something high up in the trees. As Leonard watched she turned with a grin and slapped the roof of the second car, making Sheldon jump in surprise and almost fall forward into the dirt. Raj followed Leonard's gaze, eyebrows creased delicately. 

"Oh! The _thing_. Absolutely, yes." 

"Great!" 

"In fact," said Raj, warming to the part, "I was meaning to talk to you about the very same. Now would be a perfect opportunity."

"Yeah, okay, you can shut up now..."

Leonard closed the door and stepped back to Sheldon, who was now standing upright, the expression on his face a textbook example of dawning realization. 

"No," he said. 

"Sheldon."

"No. I mean—look, I'm not going to actually _say_ please don't leave me alone with Dr. Penny Malcolm, Leonard, but...please don't leave me alone with Dr. Penny Malcolm, Leonard! I find her incredibly disarming."

"What's that supposed to mean? You hardly know her."

"Maybe not in this universe..." said Sheldon, with a sigh. 

Leonard wasn't entirely sure what this was hinting at, but knew it would inevitably come out at some point, as things with Sheldon tended to do, much like a turtle slowly poking its neck from a hard and dusty shell. He patted his friend on the arm. "Well, buddy, you know what they say." 

It wasn't really a question. It held an underlying sentiment only the two of them could understand. Because Sheldon Cooper was nothing if not stubbornly literal, and because Leonard figured he could do no harm in poking a little fun, on this of all days. 

"What, Leonard? What do they say?"

He shrugged. "It's a brave new world." 

 

-

 

When they were all seated and the doors had closed, there came a hiss of something sealing shut and he felt cool air touching his skin, the sweat drying instantly. He glanced at Raj, was about to ask him if he'd done this before but stopped when he heard a series of beeping sounds, a soft, electronic whirr as the engines flickered to life. A recording asked them to keep all hands off the dash. And then, without any input on his part, the steering wheel was turning, and they were moving silently along the track, into jungle. 

 

-

 

"They in?"

"Yep."

Wheaton clapped a hand on Howard's shoulder. "Good," he said, and took a seat in a nearby chair, lifting his feet off the floor and letting the spin turn him a little. He brought a plastic cup to his lips but didn't drink. Howard could smell the coffee, strong and bitter, and wondered if the feelings being kept behind that mostly expressionless face were a mirror to his own. Anticipation, settled, unsettled, expectations in freeflow. One could test these things a hundred times and still never know. 

"Hey, so Dr. Fowler tells me they might be in on EK9887. That's...progress, right?"

Wheaton made an affirmative noise, but said nothing. Howard went back to his computer. Clearly there was something going on there that he wasn't party to, but then, that was nothing new. Problem was, heresy gossip tended to filter in and out of his brain faster than he could keep tabs on it, so he would end up poking Bernadette for bits and pieces in the brief windows when they got to do things married couples were meant to do together. Sleep. Eat. Complain about work. And she would inevitably shush him anyway, because she had her own endless list of things to deal with out in the field. Best stick to complex systems and be done. 

Good thing his whole life was one enormous, problem-ridden complex system, then. At least he was never bored.

"Coolant's running low," he said, tapping a pen to the monitor. "That's weird, these models just came back from service." Howard swivelled round in his chair. "Hey, Kripke, which version of the diagnostics are the mobile fieldkits running?"

From the corner of the room a head emerged into the beam of a desk lamp. Barry Kripke lifted a pair of headphones off his ears, wiped a hand over his mouth and sniffed. "Uh, Beta 3," he said, his lisp catching on the numeral. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing," said Howard, turning back. "You might want to pull the code later, is all. I'm getting some nonsense bounce-backs here and I know for a fact that it's not the mechanics."

He could almost hear the sarcasm in the way Kripke drew breath before answering. "Great. I'll add it to the list."

Wheaton, who had been chewing on the rim of his cup with eyes closed, sat up at this and glared across the room. 

"You won't add it," he said sharply. "It'll go to the top of that damn thing."

"One thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine."

"I'm sorry?"

"One thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine," said Kripke, twirling the cord of his headphones between his fingers. "That's how many separate 'issues' I have currently barking for attention. But if you want me to reassess priority, then fine, I'll do it with a smile."

Howard winced. He waited for Wheaton to continue the argument but there was only silence. Wheaton drained the rest of his coffee, put the cup carefully on the desk. He rubbed a hand over his face and said to Howard, in a quieter tone, "We get any audio?"

"Ah, yes. Yes, we do." Howard typed quickly, reaching for a dial. A sharp hiss filled the room. "Sorry," he said, and adjusted it. Voices could now be heard. "I think that's car two. Your palaeontologist and the lovely Dr. Malcolm. Lucky bastard." 

They listened. To Howard's ears it was hard to make out the separate voices. Whatever it was they were saying, it seemed quite animated.

"Where are they now?" asked Wheaton suddenly, glancing at the map.

"Uh, coming past the lower hypsil paddock. Leslie tells me she let a new group of juveniles in there just last week. I think they'll be in for a pretty good show—"

Wheaton was frowning. He leaned in close. "Then why aren't they watching?" 

"Aren't they?"

"No," said Wheaton. "They're arguing."

 

-

 

When the recorded voice announced that "if they looked to their left they would see a family group of Hypsilophodon", Leonard was spinning around and had his nose up against the glass so quickly that it was all Raj could do not to laugh. He propped an elbow against the inside of the door instead, resting his chin against his palm. The list of things he had to see and do this weekend was of nightmarish proportions, and if he were honest with himself, he could have done without the flashy grand tour. But he had promised Wheaton, so here he was. 

In any case, Wheaton was right in one sense. It was something else, seeing these reactions all fresh and unfiltered. 

The long grass waved in the breeze against the concealed fence. Leonard said, "I don't see anything..."

"Maybe they're shy," offered Raj. 

"I'd be careful about saying that in front of Sheldon. He hates anthropomorphosis about as much as he hates daytime talk show hosts or the wrong type of mustard." Leonard looked over and smiled a little. "But hey, you're all right with me. I've got nieces and nephews. Nothing they like better than a talking dinosaur." 

Raj shrugged and turned to his own window. He was looking in the trees for the parrots that tended to flock among the upper branches. Of all the dangerous and incredible things prowling around on the island, oddly enough it was those small, colorful birds that he liked the most. Wheaton would probably fire him on the spot if he knew. Or, at least, never again invite Raj to any of his A-list celebrity slash geek-brat parties back in Los Angeles. "Well, this I know for certain," he said. "Even though I've had geneticists, system engineers, programmers, gamekeepers, vets, and now palaeontologists and palaeobotanists laying out charts, cell slides, feed samples, _poop_ samples, not to mention some fairly hefty words at me, I still feel like I'm learning more when they put the babies out in the nursery to play. Those big eyes, toothless mouths, those whip fast tails. You can't believe that something so small can grow up to be so...enormous."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "Poop samples?"

"Ah, you mock me here, I know—the token lackey with the stick of litigation stuck firmly up his ass—but I'll tell you something," said Raj, waving a finger, "I'm not immune to science. My sister's an astrophysicist. She once appeared on the cover of _People_ magazine, and now shares tweets with Ellen Page. One summer when we were young she made me watch _ET_ eight times in a row before wheeling me around in the basket of her bicycle until I threw up in my grandmother's nasturtiums." He thought for a moment. "You know, there have been some very forthright and persuasive women in my life. I suppose it might go some way to explaining why it took me so long to finally figure out how to speak to them." 

"And...that's why you became a lawyer?" 

Raj smiled. "No. I just thought it would be an amusing anecdote."

The fence tailed off, meaning they had come to the end of the enclosure. They were back among the trees again. Leonard sighed. "Damn."

"I shall put that down as a non-sighting in my little check box here," said Raj, pretending to hold up a clipboard and pen. "Cenetic takes great interest in customer feedback."

"I'm sure they do." 

The cars drove on. Raj turned around and tried to look across the ten foot gap and into the second car, but the light was bad under the canopy and he couldn't make out anything beyond the red and blue painted hood. "So, what was all that about, really?" he asked, after a bit.

"Huh?"

"Before, when we were getting in. Did you really need to ride with me, or were you just trying to unstick your tall friend." 

Leonard made a face. 

"I'm guessing the latter," said Raj.

"I don't know," said Leonard, more to himself. "I just got the feeling that ever since Dr. Malcolm stepped on board our plane, Sheldon's been alternatively trying to spoil for an fight or avoid her like a rabbit dodging a prairie dog. So I thought, well, no harm in mixing things up. Oh, and he especially dislikes small, confined spaces, so one of these dune buggies is like the perfect pressure cooker for sparkling conversation." He glanced back wistfully. "Too bad we can't listen in."

"But we can." Raj pointed to the dash, where an intercom was nestled in between the speakers and steering column. "Just turn that up."

Leonard practically fell onto the controls, twisting dials until there came a burst of feedback, followed by voices filling the cabin. 

_"I'm sorry, but that is hokum, plain and simple—"_

_"Hokum? O-kay, you can put your megaphone down right there, sweetie, I'm just trying to make a point."_

_"But I fail to see where your logic is!"_

_"I'm not asking you to see it! I mean, hell, I'd rather you didn't—but come on—"_

Leonard shook his head. "I love it when my predictions come true." 

"It must really be bad if they're at 'sweetie' already. Do you think _they'd_ like to fill in my imaginary form?" wondered Raj. 

"Let's find out." Leonard thumbed the mic. "Hey, occupants of car two, sorry to interrupt your valuable debate time, but have you actually seen anything yet? Raj wants to run a focus group."

There was a long pause. Then Penny spoke. 

_"So...uh, Dr. Cooper's making the sort of face that has me wondering if there's something under there trying to punch a hole through his jaw. Kinda like in_ Alien. _Should I, you know, be worried?"_

"No, that's pretty much a normal reaction."

_"Leonard."_

"I'm sorry, Sheldon. We really weren't listening for long, I promise."

_"Your sincerity is heartwarming. And no. I can safely report that we're seeing the same exhilarating nothing as you. Over."_

"The comm's two way, Dr. Cooper, " said Raj. "We can talk at the same time."

Leonard waved a hand. "I think he just likes saying it," he whispered. 

_"He's right,"_ said Sheldon, who obviously had the hearing of a bat. _"I just like saying it. In fact, speaking of methods of communication and other awkward segues, there's something I've been curious about with regards to how Wheaton thinks he's going to get any of this past the scientific community when he's so blandly adverse...adverse to..."_

He stopped. 

"Sheldon?" 

_"Good lord, is that—?"_

There was a shuffling sound over the comm. Raj spun around, trying to see through the rear window. The cars had emerged into sunshine again, and they were driving across a clearing. "Um," he began, "I believe Dr. Cooper just..."

_"Stepped out of a moving vehicle,"_ finished Penny. 

They exchanged glances. "When in Rome," said Leonard, and as Raj watched he put a hand to the doorhandle and proceeded to pull against it until it opened. A loud beep filled the cabin. Behind them, in the second car, Penny was doing the same thing. With the doors open, the cars immediately slowed. Soon she and Leonard were both jogging to catch up with Sheldon.

Raj, still seated, stared after them. He thought for a moment. Something about chaos and the wind, about throwing one to the other as if neither really mattered. It wasn't like he had anything else to worry about. 

"Well, okay then," he said, and stepped outside.

 

-

 

It wasn't quite the precursor to all hell breaking loose, but as a taster, it came pretty close.

"Are you kidding me? Are you _kidding_ me?"

"Wil—"

"They just all four of them decide to up and out of two moving vehicles?"

"It's a failsafe," said Howard. "They're not locked in there completely, the doors were always designed to open in an emergency."

"Well, hell, they sure trumped that!"

Kripke raised his eyes from the lines of scrolling code. Howard and Wheaton continued to go back and forth about cars and people who were supposed to be in them but suddenly weren't. He shook his head, tipped a can of soda to his lips, draining it, and tossed it into the trashcan by his feet. 

Let them argue, he thought. Wil Wheaton wasn't the only one with plans for the weekend. Kripke had plenty of his own. 

"Okay, here, here, I got them." Now Howard was pointing a finger at the monitor. He glanced to Wheaton, who continued to stare with a frown, his arms folded tightly. "And see? The cars have stopped anyway. Actually I'm...pretty sure I know what drew them out."

"Why can't I see anything?"

"Um. Slight problem with the cameras. Lightning storm made a wreck of them last month, and we fixed them—well, I _thought_ we'd fixed them. Just give me a second..." 

"I'm gonna call Winkle," said Wheaton. He stood up and walked away, swearing under his breath.

One thousand, four hundred and twenty-nine problems. That was his line to the boss. He sometimes upped the number for appearances sake; it was the sort of thing that was almost guaranteed to cause an explosion of exasperation in Wheaton, and of course that tended to rub off on Wolowitz, too, all of which he could work with. He liked distractions that he didn't have to waste time in creating. 

Kripke picked up his headphones and put them back on. He had plans.

 

-

 

From a distance it could have been a wounded elephant, a great mammal of the African plain laid low by a pack of hyenas. If he ignored the great crest, the thick plating, the horns. Horns of a mammoth, he thought, stuck to the body of a rhino. But of course it was nothing like. It was a triceratops.

He felt the steady beat in his chest, a thick reverberation, loud in his ears. His hands shook as he walked towards it, careful in his steps, careful to be silent.

A Jeep was parked nearby in the grass, and by the open door stood a woman with dark curly hair, wearing a khaki vest and shorts. She turned at the sound of Sheldon's footsteps and stared him up and down. In her hands was a mean looking tranquilliser gun. 

"Who the hell are you?"

"Dr. Sheldon Cooper. I might ask you the same."

The woman made a grunt of recognition. "Oh yeah, one of the recruits." She shifted the gun against her hip. "Leslie Winkle, head ranger. Careful where you're putting that boot." And with that she stepped past him, over to where another woman was standing, this one short with blond hair, glasses, and a wide brimmed hat. By their feet the triceratops was breathing, small shallow breaths, its eyes half-closed. Sheldon watched, transfixed. 

There was a crunching sound behind him. Penny and Leonard had caught up.

"You followed me," he said. 

"And you're standing in the shit," said Penny, with a grin.

Sheldon glanced down, grimaced, and gingerly stepped aside. 

"I don't believe it," said Leonard, suddenly. He was staring at the triceratops. 

"You're not the only one." 

"No, I mean—that's Leslie."

Sheldon frowned. "I'm sorry, and that matters...how exactly?"

A very slight blush flickered over Leonard's face. "We, um, we went out once, in college. Okay, maybe more than once." He scratched his chin and smiled a little. "Small worlds, huh?"

Penny grinned. She patted Leonard on the arm, just as Raj arrived, looking flustered. 

"I think I can see it," she said, "the pair of you. Yeah, that's cute."

This was a conversation Sheldon could happily walk away from, and did. As he approached the triceratops the woman in the hat caught sight of him and gave a friendly wave.

"Are you the veterinarian?" 

"Sure am." She peered up at him and wrinkled her nose. "Dr. Rostenkowski, Bernadette. Sorry, I'd shake hands but they're a bit icky."

Sheldon bent at the knee. He meant to stay a distance away but felt the strain in his back fight against the angle, so he sat down. When he looked over the vet had her hand flat against the animal's curved snout, stroking it gently as she aimed a small light into its eye. He reached out, hesitated, reached again. Heat radiated from the pebbly skin; it stretched and trembled and then he took a breath and then he was feeling it, actually feeling it beneath his palm, and it was all he could do to keep his expression contained. 

"It's...astonishing," he said. He couldn't find any other words.

Bernadette told him what had happened. Battle wounds, territorial fights. They patched up when and where they could, but she preferred to keep hands off as much as possible. "This girl got pretty trodden on, and she's one of our first...Howard always says I'm too much of a softie, but he's just as bad." 

She peered over at Sheldon, eyes blinking a little in the sunlight. He nodded, but didn't reply. He was beginning to see the whole breadth of things in this place, and wasn't sure he liked it. It was too bright, too sparse, too controlled. It would not take much to create a chink somewhere, he thought. 

The dinosaur twitched, blinked its small eyes. Sheldon stood quickly, not wanting to look into them. "Okay," he said, to no one in particular. 

"Okay?" 

The voice was Penny's. He'd forgotten she was there. He wondered if she'd been watching him. They'd already gone five rounds verbally in the car, and the last thing he wanted was to argue out here. But her expression was calm, her green eyes moving past his to the ancient and bizarre creature at their feet. 

Leonard and Raj came over, the pair of them immediately shooting questions at Dr. Rostenkowski. Leslie Winkle was approaching too, so Sheldon stepped aside to give them room, and turned his shoulder on Penny. Everything was tinged with bizarre. It was giving him a headache.

Then Leslie's walkie-talkie buzzed into life. She pulled it to her ear. "Oh, hey, boss. " Her eyes flickered to Bernadette, and she walked away again, talking quietly.

"Were you guys on the tour run?" Bernadette asked, getting to her feet. 

"Kind of," said Penny. "We might've derailed it a bit, though."

"Yeah, I think they might have noticed that." The vet smiled and gestured to where Leslie was standing, gun hooked in one arm. "The thing is, we're just in the one Jeep here, and it's already packed as it is, so I think you'd better jump back on the ride."

The sky rumbled. Sheldon looked up with a frown, wondering where the light had disappeared to so fast. A warm breeze ruffled at his shirt as he turned back to the triceratops, which was making short, snuffling sounds into the grass. "Will she be okay?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. They're tough as boots. I'm going to stay with her until the anaesthetic wears off. She'll barely notice I'm here. Probably just wander away dozily."

It struck Sheldon as vaguely worrying that such an enormous and unpredictable creature could be referred to in the same way as an old sheepdog. Though who knew. He could quite easily be wrong. The bones he was so familiar with were now being ruled by a working, active brain, hard-wired to act and respond in ways he didn't want to even begin predicting. His assumptions, his knowledge, it all seemed alarmingly distant right now. 

"Well, good." He flushed a little and turned away, annoyed at himself. Leonard, who had been obviously half listening and half staring at Leslie, gave him a nod. 

They walked back to the cars, slow steps turning to a jog and then a run as the rain began to fall. 

 

-

 

Inside it was mostly quiet. The downpour became heavier, the air close and hot with a swirling wind that whipped through the trees. Penny could sense something moving in, or moving over; she hoped the latter, hoped for a nice little tropical storm to light up the place and vanish as quickly as it came. Weather was, after all, the perfect blueprint for the sorts of theories she wrote and talked about, but it never failed to make her nervous. She sat behind the wheel, hands in her lap, watching it turn as the automated program took them slowly down the road. 

Sheldon gazed out the passenger side window. He hadn't said a word since they'd gotten back in, and had a look about his eyes that made her think it would cause more bad than good if she were to try and push a response from him now. She was beginning the think that the argument from before had been a flash of nothing; a different sort of storm, just a good three-mile run to get the blood flowing. 

No, silence was good. Of course, it was slightly more imposed now that the audio guide had switched itself off. Forcing supposedly locked doors open had probably gone some way to ensuring that they never heard it again, and to be honest she was mostly okay with that—so far all it had done was to make her want to rip out the speaker, and she was pretty sure Sheldon felt the same. But it had been kind of helpful in breaking the edginess between them. And now the rain was crashing down she wouldn't mind something to anchor onto, even if it was just a stupid voice telling her to look left or right.

Penny glanced at the intercom, feeling a faint stab of guilt. She didn't want to think about what sort of contained uproar their little escape act had caused at mission control. True, sleep was rarely lost for what Wheaton thought of her, but she wasn't that ambivalent as to completely ignore how important this visit was, and that they should probably be paying attention to other things anyway. 

"God, this rain," she muttered. "You have any idea where are we now?" 

Sheldon grunted. "What am I, Google Maps? No, I don't. It's an island, and we're somewhere on it. That should be more than enough for you to go on..."

For someone with an apparent blind spot to sarcasm, he was doing a damn good artist's impression. Penny aimed a glare at the side of his head and slumped against the seat. She was not rising to the bait again. Or setting it, for that matter. She liked a good sprint with the best of them but there was such a thing as necessary recovery time. 

Ahead she could see the rear lights of the first car, bending with the curve of the road. Things were getting churned up outside; she could feel the tires grip as they turned a corner. Now there was another fence running along to their left, much higher than the one around the hypsil paddock, and much less camouflaged. Lights were positioned at intervals, blinking on and off. 

The wind blew. A sheet of lightning flashed distantly. She sat quietly, counting out the thousands, and got to four before the thunder hit. 

"Big boys coming out to play," she murmured, watching the rain.

He turned at this, eyeing her curiously. Penny shrugged, but somehow they both sensed it, and she knew she didn't have to explain. 

The mic crackled loudly, making them jump. Leonard's voice filled the cabin.

_"That's some fence. What d'you think?"_

"Ten thousand eight hundred volts," said Sheldon without pause. "At a minimum. Alternating current."

_"Good guess,"_ said Raj. 

"I didn't have to guess; you showed us those plans. It was in the specs. Plus, I have an eidetic memory."

More lightning. This time Penny barely started counting before the clap went off like a jet blast right by her head. "Fuck, that's close," she said, gripping the doorhandle. 

"You don't like storms?" asked Sheldon.

"No," she said, "and neither do you, for that matter. Because while it's been changing spookily from day to night out there, in _here_ I can still see the whites of your eyes, not to mention the claw marks you're putting into those easy-care pants there. So don't try and act all superior on me, okay?"

He visibly bristled. "Superior how? I barely—"

The car jerked. They stared at each other. The engine was whining, and they felt roll of the tires slowing. Slowing...and stopping.

She reached for the mic but saw the light click off. She curled her hand into a fist. "Shit."

Sheldon opened his mouth to say something, paused, then closed it again, his eyes moving to the window. She followed his gaze, scanning the trees and the fence and the sky for clues before it hit her. The lights were no longer blinking. 

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Okay, this is maybe not good and...and that maybe doesn't matter." She was speaking to herself now; she didn't actually want to look at him and get another new expression that was just going to start an argument or something tinged in panic, because she knew his type. If she was going to slap him verbally she'd want to make damn sure he was going to listen to her. 

Repetition helped. She took another breath. "So. We're just gonna sit here."

Rain drummed on the roof, so heavy now that it almost felt like they were driving through a waterfall. Sheldon tapped a thumb against his knee, three beats, four beats, three again. Then he sat up, cocked his head to the side.

"You hear that?"

"What?"

" _That_."

She didn't, not at first. When the thunder hit next it felt like the sky was about to cave in, and she heard _that_ , yes, she felt that...

And there was something else. 

"Big boys coming out to play?" Sheldon looked at her. 

Penny felt her throat catch. "Yeah?" She'd been flippant, sarcastic. A throwaway line. His blue eyes were wide. "I was talking about—I don't know."

"I think you got your wish," he said.

 

-

 

"What is it?" asked Leonard. "Raj? Can you...this rain. I can't see a thing..."

Raj didn't answer. He couldn't because a realization had hit him and immobilized him to the spot, and he knew, the moment the lights had blinked off, what was coming. Leonard continued to throw questions his way, scrambling about the cabin, pressing his face against the window. With trembling hands, Raj quietly undid his seatbelt.

He knew.

 

-

 

When the roar came, she felt it run deep through her bones.

And it was terrifying. _Terrifying_. She had never heard anything like it. As she strained to see through the murky light the sky lit up again, and then it caught a shape in silhouette by the branches, the high top of the fence. A shape. A head, enormous, a reddish brown, rippled skin slick with rain... 

A head belonging to a tyrannosaurus rex. The biggest damn boy there was.

Her vision swam. "Oh, god," she said. "Oh, _god_..."

She tore her gaze away, reaching blindly for the mic, and when she looked back the shape had disappeared into the shadows. _The light had turned off. The power_...She willed herself to stop that line of thought right there. Sheldon was breathing shallowly, his throat working hard, his body stiff, but he managed to turn and meet her eyes, and for some reason she smiled at him, remembering the look he'd hidden from her as she'd wandered down the aisle of Wil Wheaton's private jet giving out her welcomes. The one that all but screamed _I'd rather not know you, please, if that's okay_. And she'd decided then that no, it wasn't. She wanted to strike against him, see what might happen. 

He didn't smile, but his breathing slowed, and she felt a little better. 

"Hey," she began. 

Then it happened.

The rain was slowing, the thunder moving away, and he had just opened his mouth to speak when something hit the fence, hit it with speed and force, a huge mass of muscle and weight crashing through and filling their windscreen, blocking it out completely. Penny saw blood smeared against tough hide, writhing indentations of grey and brown, before the light returned with a flash, and then she was watching the tyrannosaur step onto the road between the cars— 

And Raj. She saw Raj, falling out of the door, and running away.

She was working on instinct, sped-up reaction. She slammed a hand against the glass. "Raj! Leonard!" 

"Give me that." Sheldon grabbed for the mic, his fingers scrabbling at the buttons, but it was too late, Raj had disappeared into the trees. The Rex dipped its head, roared, and she hit her palms against her ears, a gesture she knew was reactionary and pointless and she didn't care one bit. Beside her, Sheldon was yelling into the mic, and she thought she could hear something back, Leonard's voice—except it wasn't Leonard, it was her, _her_ voice breaking shrill and hoarse, while outside the roar came again and the animal turned around, planting its legs near the hood of their car. 

The enormous body came in close, past the line of the windscreen; she lost sight of it for a second, then she felt a jerk, a surreal lurch as the horizon started to move. No. Not the horizon. The car. The car was moving, tipping, rising up. She fell sideways roughly, her ribs knocking against the dash. A hand grabbed at her wrist. 

Sheldon's hand. He was—

Penny looked across just in time to see the passenger door groan and swing open, and then it was as if everything was spinning into fast forward, and the moment she began to reach for him she knew she was too slow, she wouldn't make it, that he was falling as fast as she was rising. Something cracked, the windscreen maybe, a side mirror, then another sickening jerk pulled her forward. She hit her head and tasted blood, the sudden movement prying away some of her grasp on the wheel. The car was being lifted up, up, and where the door had been was now a gap with the ground levelling away, and in between, the place where she had lunged for him, there was nothing but an empty seat. Everything was breaking up; she blinked and saw teeth, open jaws, the eye of a creature that was too big and too close. It was the eye that did it, that held her still and lost in her terror until she felt her mind slowing down to normal speed. She sucked in a ragged breath, staring into that eye as hard as she could. And before it all went to black, for a second and no more, she could have sworn it stared right back into hers. 

 

-

 

For some reason the thing that made him panic the most in the moments immediately after was that he couldn't find his glasses. It was stupid, selfish; Raj was gone, the others, he didn't know, but all he could think of was that he couldn't see, he needed to see, and if he couldn't see he was stuck. And so for the longest time he could do no more than hunch over, clutching at the seat and blinking into the murky light, the strange perfume of new leather filling his nostrils as events ran through his mind in quick succession: rain, dirt track, dirt track turned to mud, tires slipping, lightning, a fence, _their_ fence, their fence gone. The comm dying, the engines stopping. The tyrannosaur attacking. 

Leonard listened. At first he was listening for the animal returning, the storm descending again, but he soon realized that what he was actually listening to was the absence of sound. So he unclenched his fingers from the leather seat, and very slowly sat up. 

The rain had stopped. In the quiet he leaned forward, trying his best to make out his surroundings, but as he was still coming down from the height of his panic at first the world seemed to be made up of nothing more than brackish, blurred shapes. Eventually the feeling subsided, just a bit, and he found that if he concentrated on one thing at a time those shapes began to merge together and form sharpened edges and recognizable forms. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough to go on. The first thing he noticed was that the passenger door was open, just as Raj had left it, and he thought for a moment, in two minds whether to step out or close it. He decided on the latter, reaching gingerly and pulling it shut with a trembling arm. He knew his best hope for being found was to not leave the cars. 

Cars...car...Leonard turned to the back window, ran a hand frantically over the glass and stared uselessly out at the road, his heart thumping. 

_There was no other car_. There was nothing but dirt and mud, churned up tire marks, and somewhere in between, the massive footprints of the dinosaur.

As he laid his head against the seat he very suddenly felt the most overwhelming need to cry. It crept around and over him like a fog, making his stomach twist into knots. He should have stopped Raj, should have stopped and gone after him. He should have run for the others. 

Leonard didn't see so much as feel the headlights hit his face. It seemed to wake him, the too-bright light; he heard voices, the click of an engine being cut, and feet hitting the mud.

And there was Leslie Winkle, pounding a hand on the glass. She said something he couldn't hear, and yanked the door open.

"Leonard." Damp curls were stuck to her forehead. She stared at him, waiting.

It hurt to speak. "Leslie, the car—" 

"I know. Listen, we can't do anything here, it's too dangerous. Come on."

He nodded quickly. The overwhelming feeling was still telling him to duck and cover, to take not one step closer to danger, but he focused on her face, those normally sharp features softened as she stood there watching him. He had just started for the door when he felt something knock against his foot, something small and loose rolling about below the steering wheel. Murmuring a thanks she couldn't hear, Leonard ducked to the floor and stuck his glasses back on.

 

-

 

She was running fast, feeling the hard grip of her rubber soles on the floor, when she turned a corner and hit him bodily in the chest. 

"Oh, geez!" Amy flushed and stepped back. "I'm sorry."

Wheaton gave a sort of cough and straightened his jacket. He didn't meet her eyes. 

"Dr. Fowler, I was, um. Looking for you."

"What's happening? I heard—"

"Yeah. Power's out. Causing some...issues." He rubbed a hand across his face. 

Amy looked down the far end of the corridor, to the glass doors leading into the control room. She saw a flash of movement, a reflection. Howard. She glanced back at Wheaton. "Do you need me in there?" 

His eyes were darting about, but they seemed to focus at this. He touched her on the arm. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Wheaton to reach out, but it was when Amy was concerned, and she felt the heat of it and edged away, and he blinked and folded his arms. 

"Yeah. Could you keep an eye on Kripke for me? I need Wolowitz to focus and that guy's spoiling for something bad, and I just—I really can't deal with that right now. Odd request, I know. Don't tell him I sent you."

"I won't."

They stood there looking at each other, but there were no more words, that much was obvious, so he gave a curt nod and brushed past her. 

Amy walked the rest of the way.

In the control room, she found Howard talking rapidly into a walkie-talkie. "Fine, fine," she heard him say, "I hear you. But I think you should come back." He paused long enough to glance her way; it was the only acknowledgement she was going to get. The voice on the other end sounded like Bernadette. Amy put a hand on the engineer's hunched shoulder and sat down.

After a moment she remembered her brief, and turned her gaze subtly to the figure sitting in the corner of the room. Kripke had removed his headphones and was typing quickly, absorbed, the light from the monitor shining at odd angles across his face. She watched him work, and she didn't speak.


	3. Chapter 3

Penny was woken by the sound of creaking.

At first she couldn't place it, and wondered briefly if it was the sound of her bones mending together, her body slowly emerging back to life; and this was absurd, of course; if she were broken she would be screaming. But her lips were fused by soreness and sleep, and the only other sound was the jungle moving quietly around her.

Moving. She was moving. How? 

She felt heavy all over. With immense effort she tried to sit up but her vision immediately turned grey, she saw spots of light and had to squeeze her eyes shut until they faded. After a bit things seemed a little clearer, she felt air touch her cheeks, a still breeze and the glowing warmth of evening sunlight on the back of her neck. She blinked and stared at her feet. She was wearing cheap lace-ups, knock off Converse sneakers with a black and white chequer pattern. When she'd bought them she remembered thinking that they were probably too young for a doctor of mathematics to be strolling around campus in, but equally she didn't give two cents for what anyone thought of her fashion sense so had worn them anyway.

It took several seconds of gazing at those double-knotted laces before it hit her what it was she was really seeing. And then she had to clap a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out.

Her sneakers were forty feet above ground, dangling in mid-air. 

The car was sitting, the whole car and Penny in it, creaking and swaying, in the branches of a tree.

_Oh god oh god oh my god_. She gulped in air, feeling her throat constrict. But the air was too thick, she couldn't take it in—the jungle, the tyrannosaur, it had roared and sucked out all the oxygen, left her to suffocate in the mangled wreckage of a stupid electric car.

A moth fluttered past her face. Penny tried to swat it away and knocked her fingers against her nose. It stung, and it brought her back enough that she realized that yes, she was breathing, and no, she wasn't falling. As carefully as she could, she twisted her head around. If she couldn't move she could at least get her bearings. She concentrated on the noises, what she could hear aside from the creaking. Birds, check. Distant hooting, a low thump. Frogs, maybe, and...something else? But what? Her ears throbbed. It even hurt to think.

She took a breath. Best stick to what she could see, which was the car. It was mostly upright ("Thank you," she murmured), the windscreen cracked but still in place, the hood crushed and bent in on itself. The wing mirror, the one nearest to Penny, was jammed upward; she could see her face, and she stared at it for several long moments. Blood had dried to her forehead and there was a star shaped bruise across her cheekbone. When she reached up to touch it she felt no pain. Only a strange numbness. She blinked and tore her eyes away. 

The floor beneath the dash was full of gaping holes, and of course, the passenger side door was missing. She didn't need to look to know that. She'd seen it fall, fall or ripped or shattered with the kick of a leg; she didn't know which, and she didn't care. The hows didn't matter nearly so much as the fact that he, that he was—

There. That noise again. The leaves. No, something below, in the leaves. 

Long shadows made it hard to see clearly, but she narrowed her eyes, stared unblinking through the gap beneath her shoes, and there it was, not a shadow. _There_.

Penny braced her arms against the seat, felt the car tremble around her. She called out, "Sheldon!" And again, "Sheldon!" 

The noise stopped.

"Penny?"

Relief hit her like a wave, muting her voice so all she could do was to choke out a very weak, and very grateful, "Yes." 

"You're in a tree."

"Tell me about it."

A pause. "I just did?"

She wished she could see his face because right at that moment the likelihood of her first slapping then kissing it were frighteningly high. She must have knocked her head something bad.

There was more movement, a muttering she couldn't properly hear, and then he stepped into a weak patch of light and she saw him fully. One sleeve of his shirt was ripped off at the elbow and he was splattered copiously with mud, but apart from that he looked more or less upright and okay. Sheldon was standing very still and she could make out his features, the long stare he was giving her as he stretched his neck to take in the precarious height that separated them. "Penny," he said sternly. "You have to come down."

It was then that he moved, hobbled, really, and she said, "You're hurt..."

"No." He looked away, winced. "Well, maybe. Yes."

Penny swore under her breath, shifted her weight. Immediately the creaking upped in volume and the gap beneath her feet began to sway. "Ah, fuck." This was going to get a whole lot worse before it got any better, even if she never moved a muscle again for the rest of her days. "Step away, Sheldon," she called out. "Can you do that for me?"

No answer. When she risked looking again he had disappeared from view. Great. Well, she'd just have to trust that he'd heard her.

For near her whole life she'd prided herself on having quick reflexes. Growing up she'd never failed in running every hot-heeled boy to the ground from tree to paddock gate to boundary's end. But the worst part was starting. Always the worst, always the hardest. She blinked at the sky, took a breath, and began to count. An easy count, backwards from ten. At six she released her grip on the seat. At two she raised her heels, ready to kick them against the dashboard, her hands extended as far as she could reach, within inches of branches that were safe and strong and untouched by metal. Just a kick. That's all she needed.

At zero, Penny moved. 

In the back of her mind she could feel a vibration, building quickly, a sound that might have been a tree falling, a car crashing, a voice yelling in her ear to hurry up, _Penny, Penny, Penny, hurry_ —and she slid and slipped and felt something catching at her shirt and her hair, and then her feet were level, her hands touching sticky mud. He was clutching her arms, pulling at her; in a daze she turned and planted her palms to his chest, curled her fingers in the damp neck of his undershirt; and together they fell in a mess of limbs as the body of the car came crashing to ground.

Silence. 

"Um," she said. "Sheldon?"

A beat, then a voice sounded at her shoulder. "Ow."

Penny began to laugh. She turned gently, rose to her knees and looked him over. He appeared to be mostly intact. "Can you stand?" 

He lay on his back, gazing up at her. "Would it be at all inconvenient if we...tested that hypothesis later? Preferably when you've stopped laughing at me."

"I'll take that as a yes."

She stood and held out a hand. Sheldon looked at it blankly for a second, then, grumbling under his breath, he grabbed hold of her and hauled himself to his feet. Almost immediately his legs began to buckle. 

"Whoa there." She caught him quickly and peered down at his leg. It was difficult to see beneath the canopy and in the fading light, but she could just make out a gash in the fabric, pale skin showing, and blood. "Okay. Remember that no-yes-maybe you gave me about not being hurt? I think we need to revise that."

He answered with a single nod. His cheeks were pale. When she loosened her grip on him he wavered a bit but remained standing. Penny swiped a hand across her forehead. They needed to get out of here. 

"This is not a wise place to be," he said, mirroring her thoughts. 

She bit her lip and stepped back. The sunlight was rapidly disappearing on them; her bearings were all wrong, here with the vines and man-sized leaves and creatures all around. In the distance something thudded, sending vibrations through the soft ground and making her whole body tense up. 

"It's still out there," she said. 

"I know." Sheldon frowned at her. "I—what are you doing?"

Penny was staring up, high, to the thick branches, the dark cover. "You're not going to like this one bit."

"No, I don't think I am." 

Well, at least they were on the same wavelength. She didn't stop to wonder how long that would last. 

"Think that leg of yours can stand a little fire?" she asked.

He tipped his head to one side, and she really did want to smile then. Not from teasing, not from sarcasm. Just thanks. "I'm not giving my leg a _choice_ , Dr. Malcolm."

So they began to climb. Awkwardly, slowly, a task interspersed with mutterings and curses. Penny dropped back to make sure he got up in one piece, and at several points along the way she saw the color drain from his face and his knuckles whiten as he clutched a branch and murmured something that didn't quite reach her ears. She let him be, tensed enough to spring forward and prop him up if it looked like he might fall and take them both down again. 

At last she said, "Stop. This is far enough." 

"I can see the road."

Sheldon leaned back against the tree trunk. He was breathing hard.

"What?" Penny pulled herself up with a grunt. She didn't have to look down to know that they were awfully high. _Please, let this be safe_ , she thought. _And dear god please don't let King Kong come chew us down._

"The road."

She narrowed her eyes. She couldn't see anything but leaves.

"I guess I'll just have to believe you." 

"No." He wasn't hearing her, or couldn't. "No, look where I'm looking. It's there. It's—"

He broke off, coughing hard, and when he had recovered somewhat he smacked his lips together and she heard the breath catch in his throat. She put a hand to his forehead, felt cool skin. "Hey, calm down. It's not going to kill us to rest a bit." She thought for a moment. "You're from Texas, right?"

This made him pause. "Yes."

Penny wasn't much of a singer—sure, she could belt out some half-decent country songs after a few bourbons, and she sure as hell wasn't one to waste any real effort on a guy by crooning him a pretty verse—but she ignored personal history and took in a breath. " _The stars at night, are big and bright.._." When she paused to grin and poke him on the arm, his only reaction was to stare at her like she'd sprouted a pair of antlers. "Come on, Sheldon, don't leave me hanging here."

It was mostly a stop-start effort, off-key and about as harmonious as a juice blender, but it helped them forget what was out there, and for Penny, that was as good a thing to hold onto as any strange lullaby. 

 

-

 

At exactly 9.13 pm Barry Kripke stood up from his chair, raised a mug in the vague direction of the room and said, "Coffee run."

Normally something like this would hardly raise an eyebrow from Wolowitz, and as expected he was true to form, hunched over the map with Bernadette's voice in the walkie-talkie at his ear. But it wasn't the engineer who stopped him. Kripke was almost to the door when Amy said, "Wait up, I'll give you a hand."

He said nothing. They walked out together. He nodded at her as she made small talk about the benefits of caffeine, and at the end of the corridor he made a sudden turn left. "Sorry," he mumbled, "nature calls. Hey, get me a decaf would you? No cream. Thanks." And he stepped into the men's bathroom and stood before the sink, waiting for the sound of her footsteps to continue on. After a moment they did. He tried not to imagine whatever look of quiet suspicion was currently making its way to her face. There just wasn't time. 

This was it. He had one night to get through and then he was out of here. He looked at his watch. One night, eight or so hours to sit quietly and pray to all hell that the traps he'd installed would tick off in the right order. So far they had. It was all in the program. Wolowitz might run the hardware, but it was Kripke's code, Kripke's system, and nobody could come near him in the hundreds of invisible ways he could manipulate it. The real magic was doing so unnoticed. 

One night. Kripke turned on the tap and rubbed soap into his hands, watching it lather. The drier wasn't working. Of course it wasn't. Things falling apart, he thought. Little things. They all added up.

He stayed in the bathroom for another seven minutes, watching the seconds tick around on his watch, until he heard footsteps passing again, and then he opened the door, walked on quick feet to catch up to Amy. She'd put in too much sweetener, but at least the mug was hot in his hands. They returned to the control room, whereupon Kripke slid into his chair, low before the monitor so he was able to hide his face. He sipped at the drink without tasting it. 

 

-

 

Maybe he slept. Maybe, but if he did it wasn't any sleep he'd experienced before. In his mind he was already giving it a type, a catalogue number: half-sleep mixed with broken consciousness and an eerie feeling of being far away, looking down at his closed eyes and bloodied clothes. Have to be supernaturally high to do that, since they were dozens of feet above the ground. And that's where Sheldon's floating diagnosis came undone, because he knew full well what was happening. He was stuck in the branches of a tree, watching one brachiosaurus as it followed another past the line of the jungle. Stuck, with a sleeping Penny leaning against him. And perhaps he was more afraid of that disturbance—the one that would mean waking her up rather than the one that might rouse a distant herd, despite the almost painful need he felt in wanting to see the animals up close. After all, they were, in their hiding, at the perfect height. 

Her breathing came softly; he found he could time it, and did so with particular concentration, because as much as this sort of proximity was unfamiliar to him, it was also strangely comforting. Beyond this, though, he still had no exact understanding, nothing quite formed yet for _her_...except that she was slight and warm and very, very still. He wished his own body could follow her lead. If nothing else, it might help in slowing his thoughts to a more manageable pace. Sheldon rested his head against a knot in the bark, and continued to stare into the dim light until his eyes grew heavy, and he wondered how much, if any of this, his mind would choose to remember.

 

-

 

"How's the head?"

"You mean the hand," said Leonard.

Leslie shrugged. "Same thing." 

He glanced across the room to where Wheaton was sitting alone, rolling a bottle of water from palm to palm. Leonard bent his wrist, glancing down at the knuckles. He could count in single digits the number of times he'd hit another man. In fact, up until all of five hours ago, that digit had been a big, round zero. It felt...he didn't know how it felt. Physically, very little. The pain was almost all in his head, in the fact that he was sitting here, they were all sitting here, doing nothing. 

No. It wasn't nothing. It was waiting. Waiting while the tyrannosaur punched holes in fences, when all they could do was to watch and wonder. When they'd finally driven into the lights of the main building, close to midnight and after hours of calling out three names into the dark without any answer, Leonard had taken one step into the control room and crashed his already bloodied hand across Wil Wheaton's jaw. It had floored them both, and he'd let Leslie pull him away and sit him down without any resistance. He was furious, bubbling inside. He'd wanted to drop against her side and sleep. 

He heard the crack of a soda can being opened, turned his head to see Leslie taking a long drink. She dropped the can into his lap and stood up. Leonard had to grab at it awkwardly before he had diet cola all over his pants. "Well, I'm not apologizing," he said, looking up at her.

She snorted with amusement. "He's a smug bastard. It was bound to happen. Might as well be the pacifist doing the honors."

A wave of recollection passed through him, deeply familiar and persistent, taking on the form of a hard-wired memory: nights in a student bar, a girl with curly hair and a crooked smile, a girl who leaned by his side, a pool cue in hand and smart quip at every ball he failed to land. This girl. Except she wasn't a girl any more, and he sure as hell wasn't that kid looking to get the good grades and a string of letters after his name. Accolades had come easily back then. Sex hadn't. 

"You sound like someone I used to know," he said.

For a moment he thought she was going to say something, agree, shoot the words back, but then Howard's voice came across the room. "Got it!"

Wheaton sat up quickly, tossing the water aside. "Power?"

"Yep. Well, ignoring the parts where Rex played shredder with the fence...but yep."

Leonard stood. His head spun, which he ignored. Mostly. He felt Leslie's hand on his arm. 

"Where are they?" she asked, beating him to the question. 

"Uh..." Howard made a face. "That I can't say. This thing takes time. Tracking's still not back. We'll get there, but—"

"Okay, fine, if it's eyes only then I'm going." Leslie began to gather up things from the table. She ignored Wheaton, took three steps towards the door before glancing back at Leonard. "How about you make yourself useful for once, Hofstadter," she said, throwing him the same look he recognized from many years ago, calling him out on a challenge even as the final ball hit the corner pocket. "Unless you really want to just stand there gaping."

 

-

 

"Do you think I should go, too?"

Bernadette's voice registered in his ear about three seconds before his brain deciphered the words, at which point Howard turned quickly and stuck both hands on her shoulders. "No!" he snapped. He wasn't aware of the volume; he had no control over it. He loosened his grip. "No, you're not going out there. Just...no."

She put a hand to his hair, brushed the thick bangs from his brow. Her voice was gentle. "Then I won't," she said.

"It's the not knowing," said Howard after a bit. He laughed shortly, tilted his head against her touch. They'd been married two years, and it already felt like a lifetime passed. "That's the killer. 'Cause then all you're left with is wondering."

 

-

 

For twenty minutes he sat there, tapping away at a line of code, hitting letters and deleting them at equal intervals. He watched Bernadette and Amy crowd around Howard, their voices soft undulations he couldn't make out. And he watched Wheaton watching them. It was almost too easy.

"Hey, Wolowitz, you're gonna need the sub-frames restored before getting anywhere with that map." Kripke stood up, and without looking he leaned back and pressed three keys in sequence. There was a beep. The screen went blank. 

He wandered over. "Hello, Houston? Anyone there?"

"I heard." Howard glanced at him. "What d'you need?"

"I don't need anything. I'm keeping you informed, is all. Anyway, just a heads up. I'm going to the data lab. Might need to take one of the Jeeps."

This made Wheaton look up. His dark eyes were fuzzy, unfocused. 

"That's fine," he said. 

Kripke didn't bother to mention that he hadn't exactly been waiting for anyone's permission. But it helped the cause, so he took it. 

 

-

 

In a dark corner of the jungle, far from where any map could pick him out even if it had all the power it could ever need, Raj was hiding.

He was hiding for the simple reason that he had exhausted his basic ability to run. So running had turned into hiding, which had duly turned into dropping like a bag of rocks from fatigue. And now something was humming in his ear. He slapped a hand against his neck until the noise stopped. When he pulled his fingers away they were streaked with blood, the mosquito a smear of yellow on his thumb. 

Blood on his neck. He wondered where else—since last night had been kind of a blur—and was about four seconds into patting down his body when it occurred to him that if he were injured he wouldn't have to look for it because he'd be thinking of nothing else. And if he were dead, well...he'd not be thinking at all.

Last night. He hadn't known what it was until he'd fallen against the door, crashed thorough and sunk blindly to his knees, but he could see now that he was in an outbuilding, no more than a hut, pre-fabricated, the sort of thing used to store wheelbarrows and garden spades. 

Another mosquito droned by. He rested his head back against the wall, and said, "Damn it." It was all he could manage. He was a polite man, and even alone he rarely swore. 

There were no garden spades in here, of course. It was empty. But it had four walls, a roof, and a door that locked, so Raj sat behind that lock, and waited. What exactly he was waiting for was maybe a mystery. He didn't care, he told himself he was okay. This last was a theme he'd been stuck on for several hours now, because the alternative made his stomach turn and his throat constrict. It made him _want_ to stare down at his chest and find a great gash of blood. 

He deserved something. He'd run away. He'd left Leonard, and Sheldon, and lovely, sarcastic Penny Malcolm with her blonde hair in a braid, and he'd run away to save himself. And now it was morning and he was still hiding, waiting for...what? Someone to come get him? Yes, because that was going to happen, so he should really hide here some more because lawyers always wear personal GPS devices sewn into their belts.

_Rajesh, you were never good at sarcasm. Now pull yourself together_. He heard his mother's voice, clipped and spoken with a frown. She was usually right.

"Okay...okay, let's do this." Very slowly, he hauled himself up, listening. Instead of the voice were new sounds, the soft chatter of birds, the scuff of his loafers on the cement floor. Through a small window he could see that the light was very faint, and he realized it must only just be dawn. But it was enough. 

He opened the door.

 

-

 

"Ugh."

Penny uncurled her fingers. Whatever it was she'd slapped to death was smeared right across her palm. She smelt a strong odour, musty, like dung, and there was a pink mark near her wrist where it had managed to bite. 

"That insect did absolutely nothing to deserve your killing it." Sheldon was peering over her shoulder, frowning. "If you'd wanted it to move, you only needed to blow a very slight puff of air onto its—"

"And what do I blow to get _you_ to stop trailing two inches at my damn heels?" she snapped back, before clamping her mouth shut. "Sorry, I meant—sorry." She pulled away and continued walking, ignoring the warmth that was spreading across her face. Luckily he seemed perfectly oblivious, simply giving her a shrug and that trademark look of disinterest. Penny wiped her hands on her jeans. She didn't know what she was saying sorry for. Apologies meant delays, and they had little time for either.

It had been properly light now for about thirty minutes, and nearly all of those had been spent pushing through scrub and mud in an attempt to get to the road. The second she'd woken and seen the mist rising from the canopy, she had pushed Sheldon out from his own slumber and into an awkward downward climb back to the jungle floor. Remarkable, she thought, how easy it was to sketch out a simple navigation from a position so high up that you were almost kissing the clouds, but once on two feet again, everything was suddenly darker, more imposing, more chaotic. Chaos. That was a joke. She was supposed to teach the damn stuff, not wander blindly through it. 

And whatever Sheldon had done to his leg wasn't helping their cause either. Before leaving the tree she'd unthreaded the scarf she was using as a belt and wrapped him a sort-of bandage in fetching coral pink, but it was still something else she was putting off dealing with.

She pushed past an enormous fern, nine feet high, the leaves fanning out above her head so feather soft and green that the light streaming through was almost glowing. High above came a shriek, the sound of branches bending and cracking. Something leapt to the ground nearby and scooted past in a shadowy blur, too fast to see. She paused, shuddering, and glanced back. 

"Not monkeys?"

Sheldon looked up. He shook his head.

She bit her lip, wondering, not for the first time, if it might be a better idea to just squeeze their eyes shut and run and far and fast as they could. 

"See that?"

He was pointing to one of the ferns, where the thick, spongy middle had been slashed open. Penny nodded.

"Looks like Rex came through here last night." Sheldon's nose wrinkled. "Marking his merry way, too, by the smell of it."

"Nice." She started a few steps but realized he was still crouched down, examining the claw marks with fascination. "Look, Sheldon, can we maybe ease up with the field notes? We need to keep—"

The noise came from the left. Penny spun, heart pounding, watching as the foliage twisted, the dark shape of something moving towards them. She was all bent and ready to run back and grab Sheldon by his collar like a dog when suddenly the leaves parted, and a new face swung into view.

"Oh god," she said. "Oh, my—"

Before she could form another word she had her arms wrapped around him. When she drew back he was blushing, and he stood very still, arms hanging limply by his side. She wondered if her hug had shocked him into silence. She stepped back to give him space, shaking her head in astonishment.

"I'm sorry." Raj smiled weakly. "Did I scare you?"

 

-

 

She led him past the main entrance, but rather than turning for the garage they walked down a dirt track that ran a short distance away from the building and ended at a high fence. This fence was not painted to blend into the foliage, but a bright orange, vivid against the green. Leonard held a hand out, feeling the electric hum.

"Be grateful for that," said Leslie. 

"You want to tell me why we're here?"

But she didn't answer, instead stopping by a gap where the leaves were sparser to lean forward, her eyes locked at a point past the bars. He stood at her side and followed her gaze. It was hard to make out, just dense, dark shapes. A tangle of vines, thin and twisted branches, mottled brown bark catching the weak points of light that managed to break through. He saw a knot in the wood, the color strangely bright, and—

The knot blinked. 

Leslie took a step back. "Just needed to do a quick head count." Her voice was brusque, jolting him back to the moment. Leonard let out a breath, not realizing he'd been holding it. He saw the pebbled skin, the long, fine snout. It stood there, silent and eerily still. His stomach turned. Everything about it, everything, felt wrong. She caught his eye and smiled very slightly. " _That's_ why we're here."

"God," he murmured. His heart was thumping. "How many are there?" 

"Five adults."

"Just adults?"

"We don't integrate the juveniles." She turned away and began walking back down the track. Leonard looked back past the bars one last time before jogging after her. The raptor's eye had gone. Barely a sound and gone. He felt his skin crawl. He didn't ask her why.

The large doors to the garage were made of a translucent material, a hard plastic with a small entrance built into one side. Leslie punched a code into the keypad, there was a click and they stepped through. He saw only one vehicle parked there, the same gas-powered Jeep they'd rolled in on last night. Dried mud coated the wheels and hood. He bent down and brushed at the headlights until they were clear, leaving his fingers stained red with clay, but when he looked to Leslie she was staring with a frown at the empty space beside them. She took out her walkie-talkie.

"Howard, who took the other Jeep?"

Leonard straightened. He couldn't hear the answering voice. He tried to catch Leslie's eye but she was turned away, head down, listening. There were a few short exchanges between her and Howard and then she switched it off.

"Come on," she said, yanking his passenger door open. 

He slid in as she turned the key. The engine rumbled loudly in the cavernous space. They waited as the doors lifted. "What's going on, Leslie?"

"Oh, nothing. I'm surrounded by dumbasses, is all." She sighed and pulled her seatbelt across, then spun the wheel. Leonard clicked his own seatbelt into place, letting silence take over as they drove away. 

 

-

 

Once the first words left Raj's mouth he found that he simply couldn't stop. The shyness from childhood, the one that had never quite left him as an adult, it felt alien to him now, ridiculous almost. He knew what it was, of course. It was relief. Relief, and enough of it to overshadow the needling jab of guilt he was trying very hard not to blurt out all over the place as he walked along. On one side was Sheldon, shuffling a little through the sticky, mud-crusted ground with a limp he was obviously trying to hide; and on the other was Penny, a hand at his elbow and concern fixed in her eyes as she listened to him talk. 

He supposed it helped twofold: it was a distraction and deterrent. Though what they could possibly hope to achieve between the three of them if something tried to attack right now was not a thought Raj particularly wanted to dwell upon. No, best stick to mindless chatter. 

"I suppose I'm just not meant for the outdoors," he said. "Give me a nice, air-conditioned office, a high-rise view of the Valley, soy-latte within easy reach. That's my wilderness of choice."

Penny scoffed quietly. "Well, aren't you just the urbanite."

It was a fairly surreal exchange to be making between two tired and knocked about individuals who had just spent the night hiding from a dinosaur. He was pretty sure he wasn't alone in thinking this, and was only confirmed by Sheldon emerging from a long break of silence to raise a hand to the trees, and say, "There."

Raj ducked his head to look; he saw clear space, and then, before he could say anything, they were stepping from sodden ground to gravel. They had found the road. 

Sheldon immediately stopped walking, bending a little to catch his breath. Penny had a look of triumph written all over her face as she stepped out behind him. Sheldon, though, was frowning. 

"Well, now what?" he asked. "Turn one way and hope for the best? It's still jungle, which means all of nowhere to me."

But something had clicked in Raj's head. He recognised the bend to the right, the tumble of rocks. 

"I know where we are," he said, "I know—"

He never finished. Penny was staring at him, waiting for him to continue. No. She wasn't staring. She was screaming his name. He felt something hot at his lower back, pressure, not pain, as the road tilted and his face smacked against gravel. He saw the thin, flashing image of a tail, a sinewy body, five foot long, brown stripes on rust-colored skin. He tried to speak, to scream back at her, at Sheldon— _Run, goddamnit, run!_

And then there were jaws, thick, piercing hot, clamping around his leg and dragging him away.

 

-

 

"Oh shit," said Howard. 

Amy turned. "What?"

"Shit, shit, that is not good." He grabbed at the walkie-talkie. "Leslie!" 

On screen, tiny dots were flicking back on. They had been watching the tracking system reboot itself. But it was taken a whole lot longer than Howard had predicted. Which really wasn't so much of a good thing with animals on the prowl. And they could do no more than sit and watch. 

After a moment Leslie Winkle's voice appeared. _"Here."_ She sounded like she was in a wind tunnel. 

Howard was staring hard at the map. 

"So, you remember how I said the fences were live again? Well, I might need to clarify that."

_"Jesus, Wolowitz. Clarify how?"_

"The building perimeter's not yet back. And, uh. That includes the adjacent enclosure." He ran a hand over his mouth. "Leslie. The raptors."

 

-

 

So fast. It had all happened _so fast_. No more than ten, fifteen seconds could have possibly passed from the three of them stepping onto the road to the raptor flying from the undergrowth. 

Raj was gone. And Sheldon—Sheldon was gaping at her, his skin drained of color, his whole body shaking from top to toe. All he seemed to be able to do was stare at her, wait for her to act. But her mind was blank. She didn't know how to respond.

A branch snapped. It was coming back; in her periphery she saw a flash of skin, a claw—but she couldn't move. _She couldn't move_. Nothing was happening. Overwhelmed, stuck, lost, her body had fused to the ground. 

It was the roar that did it. "Son of a _bitch_ ," she said, and she felt her voice catch, saliva bubbling over her tongue, and that was it, that was all she needed for her limbs to be pumping, her brain firing again. 

Penny kicked her heels hard into the gravel. She grabbed Sheldon's hand.

They ran.

 

-

 

Wheaton stared at the bank of monitors. He was looking at CCTV footage of the guardhouse outside the main entrance, at a door ripped off its hinges. He saw a pair of legs, a pool of black seeping out onto the ground. He recognized the figure but for some reason it took him a whole lot of effort to pull the name. These were casual employees who he barely exchanged two words a week with, guys who could handle a weapon but didn't know shit about what was out there beyond the fences. 

_How?_ he thought numbly. Except the thought didn't finish, because his mind stopped right there and wouldn't give him any answers. Like names he couldn't remember. Asking how, screaming it through a crackling walkie-talkie, it would achieve nothing. But it was all he wanted to do. He felt smothered, as if the whole effort of pulling a reaction was too quick, too easy. 

No, easier to stare because it hurt the most.

The image on the monitor flickered a little where he had paused it. He ran a hand over his face, tore the lid off a bottle of water and chugged it down until the cold hurt his throat. He continued to cycle through the footage, jumping back two, three hours and more. He needed to see where it began. 

 

-

 

_I'm stuck in chaos_ , thought Sheldon. _Stuck, with no end in sight._

He was all too aware that adrenaline and superheated fear was driving him to melodrama, but stopping it was as pointless as trying to extract his hand from Penny's iron grip. And because he was pretty sure his leg actually was on fire, and if they didn't slow down soon he was either going to tear off his own pants or fall unconscious into a tangle of vines; either way, a guaranteed undignified end. Then the ants could have him, nibble at his carcass and leave him picked clean. Detritus for the dinosaurs. 

Besides, he was man's representation, wasn't he? Okay, so maybe not him specifically, but someone had to take the fall. 

Philosophy, Sheldon decided, was not so much a distraction as a means of seriously diluting his grip on reality. Penny was going to have a whole lot more to drag in her wake if that happened. 

He wondered if it might be an idea to voice this, fair warning and all before he closed his eyes for good. Something to be remembered by.

"Penny..." he croaked. But she was like a bullet train, head down, eyes narrowed, vision a tunnel focus before her, and she didn't hear him. "Penny, please, can we—I think I'm going to—oh dear."

He felt his knees give way just as she whipped around. Her eyes flew over his. They heard a roar. "Damn it," she hissed, and her arms came around to snap tight against his shoulders, so instead of falling he sort of folded down slowly. He could hear her breathing hard, could see sweat blooming in dark patches across her shirt. Sheldon blinked. Grey spots danced beneath his eyelids. The roar came again, closing in on them, getting louder. _Here it comes_ , he thought.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. He really was. It felt strange, saying it out loud. 

But all Penny said was, "Thank you." As quickly as the words left her mouth, Sheldon realized they weren't for him; she was staring over his shoulder, to where they'd been running. Before he could speak she was standing up, letting him go. And then she began to yell.

It wasn't a roar. He was assigning the wrong things together. What he was hearing was the sound of an engine.

 

-

 

Leonard pulled the first-aid kit onto the back seat of the Jeep. He yanked opened the lid, took one look at Sheldon's leg, and said, "Please tell me you've got morphine in here."

"Second tray," said Leslie. Her foot was hovering over the gas pedal; she could feel her calf shaking from the effort of holding it still. It was dark in this corner of jungle, so she flicked the headlights on. A tiny shape scuttled away, bright green and slender. They needed to be away from here, she thought, working her fingers in a tight grip on the wheel. And soon. She glanced again into the mirror. "Quicker would be better, Hofstadter." 

"You know, it wouldn't hurt to maybe think about throwing some organization into your supplies," he grumbled. "It's like a junk yard for bandages here."

"Raj," said Sheldon, as Leonard tapped at the syringe. "He was trying to say sorry. About running away. Leaving you." His eyes turned to the window. "I think it's going to rain again..."

"Shh, buddy."

"It was so fast, we couldn't—ow!" Sheldon winced as the needle went in. He knitted his brows. "Could you stick me a little rougher there?"

"Nope." 

Leslie sighed and turned the wheel. As she did she glanced to the seat beside her, to where Penny was sitting, one hand resting against her forehead, her eyes half closed. "That true?" she asked softly.

Penny was still for a long moment. When she blinked a tear cut through the dirt on her cheek. She nodded.

 

-

 

Fat drops hit the windscreen. Kripke switched on the wipers, swearing beneath his breath as they squeaked and smeared the red dust that had been stuck to the glass into messy streaks. Obviously no one had bothered to clean the cars in a while. Or seal this road. He wasn't a patient driver at the best of times, and this network of potholed tracks was about as pleasant to navigate as the clogged arteries snaking out of Los Angeles during a holiday weekend. He made a left turn too fast and was rewarded with the back wheels hitting a rock and sending the Jeep into a sideways skid. It took a long fight with the gearstick and clutch before Kripke had things under control again. His heart thumped. Somewhere in the distance he heard the tyrannosaur bellow, the low crack of a tree falling, but it was far away, fading quickly. At least, he thought it was the tyrannosaur; they all sounded the same, all behaved the same. Even the ones that did nothing but stretch their long necks and chew leaves all day. They all had that same cold stare.

Jesus, but he hated this island. 

He hadn't always been this cynical. There was a time when Kripke had thought himself rather idealistic and honor-bound in the work he was doing. His first conversation with Wheaton was to be told that he could go far, wildly far—but only if he wanted it. The guy was smart; he knew Kripke was one censure away from being kicked out Caltech's doors for good. 

If someone, anyone, were to pull him up right now and ask for the truth or his life, he would tell them that he wasn't exactly embracing the idea that money and money alone was responsible for his actions. He was impressionable and weak back then, and as much as he wanted to think otherwise, that simply hadn't changed. The truth? Fuck the truth. He could never say it. Just as he could never really say no screwing the guts out of the same company that could have given him everything. 

Strange, or not, how some things work out.

Now the wipers were doing a permanent singsong squeak that made him want to bang his forehead against the dash. He took a deep breath and looked down to the passenger seat. The case was there, next to his backpack, still sealed up tight. It contained genetic material for a dozen species of dinosaur, worth, well—he didn't know. A lot. And here he was, casually carting this insanely precious cargo down a half-finished dirt track. Several yards of duct tape were wrapped around the case; tape that he had grabbed off a shelf in the garage at the last minute, because the thought that it might spring open in the time it was going to take him to make a move across the island was making his insides turn into knots.

He came out of a bend and immediately touched the brakes. Ahead was a junction, splitting left and right. Where a sign should have been there was a bare metal pole. Of course. Of course there was no fucking sign. What else should he have possibly expected? The trees stretched high across the road, blocking out the light and most of the rain. Kripke leaned forward, eyes narrowed, chin resting on the wheel, and was about to put his foot back on the gas when something caught his eye. He reached into the back for a flashlight and shone it through the windscreen.

"What the hell...?"

At the base of the pole, turned on its side in the damp grass, was a shoe. 

 

-

 

"Where'd he go?"

Amy looked up to see Wheaton standing back from his chair, his eyes fixed to the other side of the room. He had obviously been running a hand through his hair and now it was sticking up a little. She followed his gaze.

"Kripke?" She frowned. "He went to the data lab. He asked you, remember?" 

"And you just let him?"

"No." Amy spoke patiently, slowly. "You did." She reached for one of the internal phones, where they had direct lines set up to the accommodation building and the labs. Her fingers closed around the handset, the dialtone buzzing faintly in her ear. "You want me to try and get him?"

Wheaton didn't reply. He pressed his lips together and looked at her briefly, as if she were hardly there. 

Amy saw that the monitors were still running the old CCTV footage on a loop. She left the phone, and was about to stand up herself and go over when he said, "Dr. Rostenkowski, where are the guns?"

Bernadette stared at Howard and Amy. She turned carefully to Wheaton. "You didn't want to keep any here. You said the idea was wrong, that it went against everything—"

There was a sharp crash as Wheaton's hand flew out and knocked the water bottle to the floor. It rolled against his foot and he kicked it away, turning quickly, his shoulders hunched. A heavy silence fell around them, and then Amy put a hand to the desk and stood, wincing slightly as the wheels of her chair squeaked. She kept her eyes on him, at the sudden flush at the back of his neck. 

Wheaton turned. "Well. Damn you if you think I really meant that," he said.

He straightened, brushing his palms against his jeans. He took a step to retrieve the water bottle from the floor and placed it back on the desk. Then he walked out without another word.

Nobody moved. Finally Howard spoke.

"He... he can't go out there on his own. I mean, is that what I just saw?"

Now Bernadette was nodding at her husband's words, blue eyes bright behind the frames of her glasses. They were both waiting for Amy to respond, as if she knew their boss better than anyone. Amy wanted to tell them they were wrong, that the anger in his eyes, it was something new, and she didn't understand it. Her throat felt dry. How could she know what he was—how he might—

"He's not," she said. 

Amy walked to the door, and then she was running.

 

-

 

There was something almost strange about the lobby as they walked inside. Maybe it was the silence. It was a bright, well-lit room, glass-walled and minimally decorated, but even with the clouded sky the whole area seemed to be glowing of its own accord. 

Leonard set the first-aid kit down by his feet, and turned to help Sheldon sit on one of the leather couches that lined the side of the room. He stood up, wincing as his muscles ached in protest, and rubbed his arms. 

"What's up with the air conditioning?" he asked Leslie. "It's like a meat locker in here."

She gave him an odd look. "Really? That's what you want us to go work on—the ambient temperature?" 

He opened his mouth to shoot back a reply but closed it just as quickly, knowing whatever he said would simply be bait for another snark-filled exchange, and as much as he was sort of warming to the idea, now really wasn't a good time. So he focused instead on getting Sheldon comfortable—or at least, focused on stopping Sheldon from picking apart the bandage that was wrapped around his thigh. No surprises there. To say his friend had little capacity for dealing with injury or illness was an understatement of sigh-inducing proportions. 

"How're you doing?" Leonard asked this with more than a little hesitation, but Sheldon only shrugged. His eyes met Leonard's briefly and then dipped to the floor. 

The sound of footsteps made him turn. Leslie's gaze took in the two of them, one hand at her hip. She was frowning. 

"What?" 

"Not sure we should be getting too comfortable here," she said. "I'd feel a whole lot better in the control room."

Sheldon looked up. "Would any of you people be greatly offended if I were to take a small nap?" he asked, blinking slowly. "I hate to cause offence. It's such a terrible divider..."

"Then you should go," said Leonard to Leslie. "Both of you. I'll stay with him."

Leslie looked unhappy at this. "I don't know."

Now Penny had joined them. She was zipping up a pack and pulling it over one shoulder. The two women eyed him carefully. "Look," said Leonard, "sometimes he gets like this. Scattered. Stubborn."

"I've noticed," said Penny. 

He caught the expression on her face a second before it disappeared. The look she was giving Sheldon, who of course remained oblivious. A sort of familiarity that seemed strange until one realized what they had been through. Leonard didn't particularly want to know, or pry, but the part of him that knew Sheldon and cared about him, it did wonder, just a little. Knowing Sheldon as he did, something more than resilience had kept them alive. 

Leslie, meanwhile, had taken a long drink and was now giving Leonard a sideways look. "Fine. Don't go anywhere," she said, and she and Penny stepped through an internal door, and into the building proper. 

For a moment he considered calling her back, saying sorry (for what, he didn't know; but he was Leonard Hofstadter, there was usually something), that this was a bad idea, they shouldn't split up, even if her curt non-goodbye had meant to convince them that it was only for a while. And he even got as far as taking a step toward the door when a groan made its way up from the couch. He looked around. Sheldon was tapping his fingertips together, spider-like, staring at a point somewhere past Leonard.

"It picked us up," he said.

Leonard frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"Picked us up. Threw us into a tree." Sheldon stopped tapping and dropped his hands to his lap. Outside the sun shone brightly, a break in between the rain. Leonard watched him, unsure of what to say. He knew it wasn't anger in his friend's voice, only tiredness, and it smacked of betrayal. "Some things should stay extinct."


	4. Chapter 4

She strode into the control room only to be immediately accosted by a trembling Bernadette, all blonde hair coming undone and murmurs of _thank god, thank god_ as she wrapped her arms around Leslie's neck.

"Okay," said Leslie. She carefully extracted herself and looked Bernadette in the eye. She could tell by the expressions on their faces that they knew about Raj. Or suspected. She decided not to ask which it was. Bernadette stepped back with a sniff and her eyes fell on Penny, who had been a few steps behind Leslie into the room, but was now keeping her distance out of respect. 

"Where are the others?" asked Bernadette.

"Lobby. Our palaeontologist friend is kind of beaten up." Leslie glanced to Penny, who held up the field kit. "I just came to get more supplies. We're going back." She paused. "What's happened?"

Bernadette shook her head quickly. "Did you see Kripke?"

"No." Leslie frowned. "Howard told me he took the other Jeep, but I figured he was—"

Across the room, Howard gave a snort, rolling back in his chair. His eyes found Leslie. The expression on his face was not a good one. "So you want to hear a story?" he asked. "Maybe the one about how that bastard pulled the fucking wool over our eyes?" He stood up and waved a hand at the far workstation, the one surrounded by loose papers and soda cans. The monitor had been turned around, and she could make out lines of code scrolling down the screen. 

Leslie stared at him. "What'd he do?"

She almost didn't want to know, and by the pained look that passed between Howard and Bernadette she could pretty much diagnose the situation herself. 

"Not a lot, actually." Howard glanced at the code and shook his head. "But that's the killer, see. He knew exactly where the weak points were, what to hide, what to show. And now I'm trying to...well, I don't _know_ what I'm trying to do. I'm an engineer." He looked at Leslie. The helplessness was written large in his brown eyes, as if something awful was crawling through him. Not for the first time, she wondered where Wheaton was, why he wasn't the one standing here, telling her all this. "I've got a chopper on its way but there's a weather system to rival the gods coming in and...it might take some time," said Howard. "We really need to think about getting up onto the roof."

She listened to what he wasn't saying. The bald simplicity of a last ditch effort. When in danger, get to high ground. Climb to where the creatures couldn't get you. Wave to the sky, hope for rescue. She knew there was nothing else they could do.

"Then I guess that's a plan," said Leslie. 

 

-

 

It could have belonged to anyone. A workman or a contractor. They'd had dozens out here at various times, trying to fix these roads. But even as he was thinking this he knew it was wrong. It was too fancy, the leather too fine to be the kind of thing worn while ploughing up track with a digger and high-visibility vest.

A clap of thunder sounded out like a whip cracking, fast and sharp. It startled him and he swore loudly and ducked his head against the rain. He really, really didn't have time for this. With a sigh he slopped back through the mud to the Jeep, tossed the shoe onto the back seat, and was about to get in when something made him stop.

Kripke fumbled at the flashlight again, aiming it at the foliage. Shining leaves came into the circle of light. He saw a cloud of tiny insects bob through the air. No animals. He shouldn't be standing out here anyway. No time. No fucking time for any of this.

"Hello?" His voice sounded weak, small. He coughed. "Anyone there?"

The sound came again. A groan. Lower, to his right. Kripke turned, his hand on the Jeep's door, straining to listen as the rain fell. He swung the light along the edge of the road.

There was a hand in the grass. 

A hand, fingers flexed slightly, the skin dark and glistening. He moved the light. He saw an arm, a torso, legs. Feet with one shoe missing. And a face, staring right at him.

"Raj?" 

Kripke dropped to his knees. He pushed aside leaves hurriedly until Raj's body was exposed, and when he saw him, properly, he felt his stomach turn, and he had to look away and breathe hard through his nose to stop himself from throwing up. A great slash had opened up Raj's thigh, and a smaller one was split into a curve across his abdomen. The lower portion of his shirt was seeped through almost completely with blood. His eyes were unfocused, cloudy, and slid away from the light as if they were pained by it. But his lips were moving, and when Kripke bend his head, he could just make out the few, broken words. 

"This will be...one hell of a dry cleaning bill," said Raj.

"Oh, fuck," said Kripke softly, choking back a laugh before he could stop it. Raj smiled in return. And then Kripke was left staring at him, decisions flying thorough his mind. These injuries weren't bad; they were beyond it. There was nothing he could do. What little time he had was running down. He felt the weight of the cargo drawing him back even as he put a hand against Raj's shoulder and lifted him up. Raj moaned, the sound seeming to come from all around him. Kripke left the flashlight on the ground and half-carried and half-dragged him to the back seat of the Jeep. Every hair on his head, every inch of his clothing was now wet from a combination of rain and sweat. When he ducked back to retrieve the light he saw that his hands were covered in blood. No idea. He had no idea what he was doing. What he was going to do. Except ignore the small voice that was screaming at him for not having the strength to keep to the one plan he'd been stuck to for close to a year. 

The shoe was still there. That goddamn shoe. He should have kept on driving.

He slumped into the driver's seat, eyes closed, heart racing. He was trying very hard not to glance into the rear vision mirror, but as he turned the key and felt the rumble of the engine roar briefly through the tiny cabin his eyes betrayed him, and the sight of Raj, breathing jagged and shallow as he lay against the seat, it very nearly made Kripke jump out into the rain again. To stand there until he really was the only one left. 

But he didn't. He pressed his foot to the gas, gripped the wheel, and paused.

From behind him, a cough. 

"Are we going back?"

Kripke stared with heavy eyes at the metal pole. No sign, no idea. The symbolism couldn't be more blunt if it tried. 

"Despite of what I think of this place," he said, "and the five mil I was going to get from a couple dozen little tubes? What do you think?"

Raj's lips moved. They formed two shapes, one after another. In the dim light, it looked like _thank you._

With a sharp pull and heavy foot Kripke turned the wheel. He drove without speaking, tracing through deep tire marks he had already made, and this time he didn't have to look back to know that Raj was dead.

 

-

 

Wheaton punched in the code once, twice, getting an angry beep each time. "Jesus, come _on_." He slammed the heel of his palm flat against the locker and closed his eyes, taking in several long breaths. It didn't help; he felt as if his head were about to cave in.

"What's the number?"

He turned. Amy was standing at his shoulder, her eyes regarding him with a measure of calm that seemed impossibly distant, as if it belonged to another place, another situation entirely. 

"Didn't hear you follow me," said Wheaton, frowning. 

She tilted her head to one side. "Well. I'm here now."

"Nine-four-oh-seven-two, hash," he said quickly, and she slipped a hand past him, pressing at the keypad. The light flashed green and the lock clicked. He pulled at the handle. 

Before them, in row upon row, were dozens of weapons. Handguns on a lower shelf, rifles, shotguns and tranquillizer guns above. He bent down, ripping through boxes of ammunition until he found what he was looking for. He reached for a handgun, testing the weight of it, and looked at her.

"You're not scared, Dr. Fowler?" 

"I don't know. It's all relative," she said. She stared back a moment longer and pulled out a weapon herself, flicking it open. It was an assured movement that might have surprised him, had she not been standing there already. Had she not followed him in the first place. Surprise, he decided, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans, didn't mean a whole lot. Not here, not now.

"Hey, boss..."

They looked up together to see Leslie and Penny. Leslie was the one who had called out, and she looked relieved, but when Wheaton stepped aside she was able to see inside the locker her face darkened in an instant. Suddenly she was turning on him, pushing him into the wall. "And when the hell were you going to tell us about this? Every time I've asked for more weapons and you've said no, stick to the tranquillizers. Softly fucking softly, and all this time—" She let him go, ripped her eyes away. "You son of a bitch." 

Penny put a hand on her arm but Leslie glowered and shrugged her away. Wheaton exhaled sharply. He could feel his patience trailing away fast. "Where are you going?" he asked Penny.

"Lobby," she said.

"Okay. Can you handle one of these?" 

For this he was rewarded with a look of amusement and a flash of teeth as Penny grinned, taking the weapon he was holding out. Meanwhile Leslie Winkle scowled and brushed a swing of hair behind one ear. She edged past to grab a shotgun, loading it with speed, her eyes flicking once to his. "And where are _you_ going?" she asked bluntly. 

But Wheaton was already turning away, closing the door to the locker and starting down the corridor. He reached back, felt the outline of the gun, and smoothed his jacket down. The frustration from before, he could already feel it fading away. Behind him Leslie repeated her question, anger bleeding out between the syllables of his name, and then Penny's voice joined her, words he couldn't make out, drawing Leslie back. He heard footsteps approaching and was about to spin around and yell something he'd probably regret, when he saw that it was Amy. Amy, her expression unchanged, matching his stride. Wheaton clamped his mouth shut.

 

-

 

At some point Leonard got up from the couch and wandered over to examine the computer terminal that was set into the curved reception desk, but it wasn't until Sheldon's ears registered the sound of fingers tapping onto a keyboard that he actually realized Leonard was gone. He frowned at the empty space next to him. "What's happening, have they called our flight?" he murmured, pushing against the leather. His limbs felt heavy. The thought of getting up was proving much more difficult than the actual physical act. Maybe he should stay sitting. 

"No, buddy, not flying anywhere just now." Leonard's voice drifted over from the other side of the room. "Try to relax."

"Okay," said Sheldon, falling back again. That did seem the better option. He blinked a few times and added, "I don't like this morphine. I'd like to have that on the record."

"Yeah, well, you'll like it a whole lot more if I took it away."

He lifted his head, narrowed eyes finding Leonard's slightly hunched figure behind the desk. "You know that sort of posture will lead to backache." Sheldon stared some more and then frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Not real sure...trying to get past this login, for a start. My hacking skills are a little rusty."

Sheldon made a face and turned away. He didn't hold out much hope on that particular line of investigation, but if it kept Leonard occupied, then good. His colleague took so much looking after. Meanwhile, it didn't surprise Sheldon one bit that his body had so gleefully leapt upon a little opiate as a coping mechanism. Fear led to strange reactions. He thought again of Penny Malcolm. Where had her fear been? He was still trying to figure that one out. 

As he stared out the window, Sheldon's lips took on an amused shape. "She was running around like it was nothing," he said.

The tapping paused. "Who?"

"Penny," said Sheldon.

He didn't need to look to know that Leonard was shaking his head, one of those irritating and mysterious half-smiles tweaking at his lips. "Well, she hauled your ass, that's for sure."

"She's unnerving."

"You should thank her. She probably saved your life." Leonard paused, then added, more to himself, "God. That's a hell of a thing to say. I mean, think about it. Just think about it."

Sheldon, however, was not thinking about anything. His ears had caught onto something. He twisted his upper body around, wincing at the dull thud of pain that began to radiate from his leg up through his body. All he could see above the edge of the couch was the plaster skirting along the tops of the walls, a scattering of rain as it wiped the sunlight off the glass. 

"Except that's probably a bad idea," continued Leonard with a sigh, his voice dropping to a mutter. "Oh, who am I kidding. Says the world champion worrier, who, by the way, wasn't exaggerating about being the worst hacker on the planet. And now I'm referring to myself in the third person, so that's good. Good...okay. Sheldon?" There was the sound of Leonard rolling his chair away from the desk, the wheels on his chair squeaking. "How's the pain? You need anything?"

"Yes...stop talking."

Leonard stared. "What?" 

"I hear something," said Sheldon.

 

-

 

"So," said Penny.

Leslie was walking fast. Penny had to put in a few jogging steps to stay by her side. She tried to catch her expression but couldn't make out anything much past that wedge of curls. 

"So," said Leslie.

"Yeah. _So_. On a scale of complete and utter mayhem, one being whoops, someone let the gate unlocked, to ten, my my, Grandma Rex, what big teeth you have—where do you think this whole enterprise stands. I mean, right now. Right this second. Me holding a badass gun, you holding a badass gun..."

She pulled up. Leslie had stopped, eyes narrowed and dark with confusion. "You're kidding. Is this some sort of survival mechanism, you trying to make me laugh?" 

And Penny said, "Does it look like I'm laughing?"

Leslie took one look at her and shook her head. They continued through the winding corridors, passing glass-walled labs, shadowed and empty. Many of the lights were still out from the shortage, and hadn't come back on. "You guys normally operate on a skeleton crew?" asked Penny, looking in. 

"Something like that. Wheaton's got money to burn. He wanted to push the system, test the autonomics. Though that could only ever go so far. Still need the grunts to wrangle the herds."

Penny thought about pressing further, but she got the feeling that would lead pretty much nowhere. Nowhere she couldn't guess, anyway. The urge to keep talking was tempting, though. It kept her from imagining the end, grisly, bloody, stupid. Preventable. That was a nice, abstract word. It swung hand in hand with chaos in its absurdity. 

Without realizing it, they had both slowed their pace, perhaps anticipating what neither wanted to say out loud. Leslie very quietly cocked her gun, raising it to her shoulder, and that's when Penny saw it.

A tail, dull brown, the tip striped and slender. Disappearing slowly past the bend of the corridor. Right in the direction they needed to go.

 

-

 

Leonard listened. He listened as hard and best as he could, but still, he heard nothing. Except that wasn't entirely true. He could hear his own breathing, the thrum of the computer terminal. There was a gentle click coming from somewhere—he guessed it was the ceiling ducts circulating the cold air. But whatever it was Sheldon was hearing wasn't reaching Leonard's ears, so he gave up and went back to the keyboard. Not that he was getting anywhere fast there, though. He really hadn't a clue what he was looking for. Something to keep his thoughts away from the outside. Or the inside, for that matter. From Raj. From Sheldon's injuries, the fact that morphine alone was pretty soon going to be about as helpful as a paper napkin...

"Hey, look," he began, feeling as if he should speak for the sake of speaking, and not at all because he was starting to hate the quiet, when Sheldon made a sort of strangled noise, like he was trying to cough out a hairball. Leonard raised his eyes, but something new was blocking his line of sight and he couldn't properly make out Sheldon, so he turned back, and— 

He froze.

The computer beeped at him, the cursor blinking. He had made it past the login screen.

And a velociraptor was standing in the lobby.

Leonard stared at the cursor. Two blinks, three, four. Fear held him still, his chest tight as if his lungs were filled with liquid; and maybe it was fear, too, that made him lift his head, to speak in a voice he wasn't entirely sure was his own. "Um. Sheldon?"

"Yes."

"You okay?"

Sheldon's reply seemed to take forever to reach him. 

"Well. That depends..." 

"Good," said Leonard.

Exchange over, Leonard slid his eyes across to where he really, really didn't want to look. The raptor held its head down low, the small nostrils quivering. Could it smell his fear? he wondered. Because he sure as hell could. Sweet, rotten carnivore breath, he could smell it, taste it. He saw skin that was dry, grey and brown, loose in some areas, tight across the belly, the back, the long, stiff tail. Forearms tucked close to the torso. He didn't—couldn't—bring himself to stare at the hind legs, but they pushed into his peripheral vision before he could stop it, and the sight of the twin claws resting on the lobby floor was enough to suck the remaining moisture from his mouth and set his stomach turning over until a moan escaped his lips. Nowhere to go. They were trapped.

So Leonard did the first, and only, thing that came to mind. 

He stood up. 

The raptor seemed to be looking right through him, but the reaction was immediate. It hissed sharply, the ribs contracting as it took one shallow breath after another. Then it began to move.

Strangely, it was in that same movement that he felt his fear ebb away. Nothing remarkable flashed before his eyes, no images, no last memories. Nothing but a simple need to walk across the room and help his friend. Sheldon was in pain, so Leonard would help him. 

He took a step. He waited. But the strike never came. Instead there was a bang, a stinging echo. For perhaps half a second he was looking at blood and grey hide ripped apart, wondering what had happened, wondering what had changed.

Because the raptor's head had just exploded. Leaving Leonard staring into the barrel of Leslie Winkle's gun.

"You're welcome," she said.

He leaned hard against the desk. His whole body felt like it had been dunked into ice water. "Jesus," he murmured, "Leslie..." When he found the energy to stand up again, he saw that she hadn't moved and was now staring down at the raptor. He walked over, touched her hand with his own. "I'm sorry," he said. 

She looked at him sharply. "Well. Don't be," she said, and stepped away.

Across the room, Penny was helping Sheldon up off the couch. She was muttering at him, loud enough for Leonard to overhear. "God, could you be any taller?"

Sheldon grunted, peering at her as if he couldn't quite make her out. "It would be wiser to holster that weapon properly, Dr. Malcolm," he said, "instead of slinging it around like a badly paid extra." 

"Yeah. You're real cute, too."

Leonard left them to it and looked back to see Leslie reloading the shotgun. Her movements were sharp and assured. She was nodding towards Penny, speaking quickly.

"You okay taking them back to the control room?"

"Yep," said Penny.

Leonard frowned suddenly. "Oh? And what are you going to do?" 

Leslie shrugged. Her gaze was steady. Not a challenge, but an acceptance of fact. 

"My job," she said.

 

-

 

They walked through the building, down through the underground garage, emerging into an outside that was warm and humid. Amy looked to the sky and saw patches of blue. The clouds hung low, but the rain had stopped. 

Wheaton turned slowly, surveying the trees. He hadn't said one word since their split from the others. After a beat he swivelled on one heel and strode towards the fence. 

She didn't have to ask. They stood together and stared at the gaping tear, the six-foot vertical slash, the splayed wires and broken branches. It was the straightness of the gap that sent a chill through her, how it almost exactly split the center between two of the metal struts. Right at the weakest point. 

He brought up the gun, his body tense. "They knew," he said. 

Another time, she might argue this; except when it came to Wil Wheaton there really was no grey area, and to tell him they couldn't possibly begin to assume anything, let alone draw such black and white lines, it wouldn't help. "This is madness. We shouldn't be out here," she said instead.

"I agree," he said, and stepped back, touching her on the elbow. It wasn't until they reached the garage doors again that she realized just how strange that was, feeling the hand of someone who, as far as Amy was concerned, normally kept a measurable distance. She stood watching him tap at the keypad again, except now as she gazed at the digits they suddenly seemed to melt into a red blur of light, and the sensation of fear, crawling, deep and unsettled through her body, of wanting desperately to be inside, it almost had her reaching forward to return the gesture, to say—

_To say what?_

She didn't know. That she was more disturbed by fear itself than the cause of it? 

Something made her turn. The building of a sound, low and rumbling, then louder, more immediate. More familiar. Amy said, "Look, isn't that—?"

The rumbling reached a peak as the Jeep came into view and sped towards them across the gravel. She tried to see who was behind the wheel but the windscreen was just a mirror-sharp reflection of light; but in almost the same moment she realized there was only one person it could be, and she stepped back without a word. The vehicle braked sharply, the brightly-painted Cenetic logo catching the light, and then there was a sudden quiet all around them, the only sound a faint ticking from beneath the hood as the engine cooled. The doors remained shut.

With his hands still closed around the wheel, Kripke raised his eyes. He didn't look at Wheaton but his gaze fell on Amy. She couldn't read what was behind that expression, only knew it was one she rarely saw on anyone, and if she lived to a great age she could only hope that she never saw another like it again. Beside her Wheaton was standing completely rigid, shoulders slumped a little as stared at the Jeep. It was only as Amy turned to speak that she caught sight of something, a dark shape against the window of the back seat. For one surreal moment her brain took it to be an animal, and she was caught in an argument with that thought until the second passed and then she was running, falling against the door, hands slipping until it opened. 

"Raj," she said. "Oh my God, Raj..." She saw the blood and turned back, yelling now. "Wil, help me!" In the driver's seat, Kripke had slumped forward, his forehead close to the wheel. He was saying something she couldn't make out. She felt light all over, and furious. She cradled Raj's head and neck, pressed a hand to his cheek. " _Wil!_ "

Wheaton moved, though he didn't go to Amy. He made a slow half-circle, surveying the Jeep carefully as if considering its value. His body was relaxed, his steps measured and deliberate. 

"Is he dead?" he asked.

Amy's hands were trembling. She saw the long, dark lashes, the handsome face distant. She didn't know how to rationalize what she was about to say, though she made herself do it, to stare down at his face until the trembling stopped. "Yes."

Now Wheaton was at the driver's window, opening the door. 

"Boss," said Kripke.

But Wheaton didn't reply. He took a step back, raised his hand. 

And he shot Kripke in the head.

 

-

 

In the moment just before it happened he felt himself drawing away, disappearing neatly and painlessly into another place. He felt the tendons in his arm move as he turned his wrist and gripped the gun, and he saw the way his lips dropped apart, how his jaw slackened, how every part of him seemed unnaturally loose. And then he was pulling the trigger, watching a neat, dark circle spread out across Barry Kripke's face, and he wondered why there was no noise, why there was no blood. Recognition had faded away; this was a stranger's face, with a stranger's eyes, staring without feeling into his own. The weapon was cold in his hand. He stared at it, for a long time, wondering.

Of course what he was seeing and what in reality was happening were so far apart to be almost laughable. Wheaton twisted his neck, feeling the sweat stained collar of his shirt cling to his skin. He tested his voice, producing a sound that was somewhere between a choke and a bubble of hysteria, a thick gag as if he were jamming a finger down his own throat. When he looked back to the inside of the car he saw that half of Kripke's face was blown away, no longer a neat circle, nothing fixable, and then, very quickly, he was rushing back, smelling the blood, feeling the heat of the gun, feeling his heart crash four ways like it was trying to burst free from his chest. 

Dead, dead. He heard the word, but couldn't tell if he was saying it or it was being hammered into his head. _Things come in threes_ , he thought absently. Dead, dead, dead...

Someone approached him, light footsteps crunching in the gravel. Amy. He frowned at her. She always wore those same flat shoes. They looked so slight and insubstantial for the outdoors. But then, he thought, she was normally in her lab. He opened his mouth to tell her to get inside, that this was no place to be standing about, when she said his name, and put a hand to his arm.

And then she was telling _him_ to go. That wasn't right.

"Okay," he said.

His brain felt foggy. That was new. Christ, but he needed to sleep. Amy steered him towards the door, which was still ajar from when he'd punched in the code. That wasn't right, either. Those things were supposed to close automatically once left unattended for more than...what was it? Twenty seconds? No matter. It was something else that Wolowitz had let slide. This place was falling apart everywhere he looked. It was as if he was throwing money into a goddamn hole. 

He was reminded of Dr. Malcolm smiling at him over coffee, telling him almost the exact same thing. 

"Fucking chaos," he said, and pulled the door all the way open.

Amy moved to step through, but when Wheaton hesitated, she turned, looking at him. "What did you say?"

"Nothing, Amy." And he saw something shift in her gaze, surprise maybe. Because the sound of her name, saying it, it felt out of place. He wondered how that could be. Her hair was falling from its ponytail, long strands caught against her neck, so he reached over, smoothing them back. She was smaller than him, though not by much, and as he stood there he felt again to be drifting away, like before. Except this time he resisted. He wanted to feel something, even if it were no more than this. So he kissed her. 

For a long moment nothing happened. She was very still, and his head was bent down to meet her, both of them were barely moving. But then she was shifting a little, and murmuring something against his lips, murmuring or kissing him back, he wasn't sure. Both perhaps. Neither. It didn't matter, because her hand was touching the side of his face, and he broke away quickly, nodding, not knowing what else to do. 

Amy stared at him. She didn't speak. Instead what she did was to take a step back, waiting for him to follow; and it was at that moment as he felt his foot lift, an automatic response requiring no thought, when something rushed through his mind, a decision, an answer, he didn't know, something quiet but more brutal and stronger than he knew he could ever resist. 

Wheaton turned quickly, quicker than she could react, and pulled the door closed, locking it shut. 

Dead, dead, dead. He walked to the Jeep. It was easy to ignore her voice, his name, even easier to turn away, because the sound of it felt unreal to his ears. He wasn't listening for _them_ because he knew they were out there, that they could see him; rather, he thought of the clean slash in the fence, how as he'd raised his gun he'd seen Raj's leg, the pale cotton stained dark as a shadow; how he thought he'd seen his own denial break. 

Amy continued to cry out, her palms crashing against the door. She yelled and yelled until the sound became a muffle, at which point he blinked and saw nothing but a blur, heard nothing but the creaking of the vehicle, the slow approach of nimble, clawed feet. The first raptor appeared to his left, the next from behind. Wheaton kept his eyes wide open, wrapping his fingers around the gun, feeling the muscles tighten, letting them loose again. Still warm. He let it fall. 

 

-

 

In the control room they found Bernadette and Howard moving about quickly, gathering equipment and getting ready to leave. 

"Okay, we're out of here," Howard told them as they came in. He was holding separate walkie-talkies in each hand, both making separate urgent noises. He paused, looking them over. "You guys made it."

"Yeah," said Penny. "Don't speak too soon."

She slid her shoulder away from Sheldon. He looked rough as hell, but he was heavy and the weight of him was kind of knocking her about. She could've let Leonard take him, of course, but she hadn't because they were all as stubborn as each other, so that was that. 

Now Sheldon was frowning at Howard. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

Howard snorted. "Okay, well, let's we weigh up our options—"

"Hey," said Penny sharply, drowning him out. "Here's a suggestion. Let's argue about it later."

Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her. To her left, she thought she saw Leonard smile, and a burst of annoyance rose in her throat, and she was about to turn on him when he dropped his eyes to the floor, his expression wiped clean. Wordlessly, she helped Sheldon back into a standing position and hit the release on the door. They filed out in silence.

 

-

 

Being back inside did not mean total safety, that much she knew, that much was obvious. Except as she sat on the floor of the empty corridor outside the lab, her calves turning numb beneath her, Amy was pretty sure that she had neither the strength nor will to really care either way. 

There was only one thing she wanted right now, and that was to stop the image of his face returning to her. No expression had sent her so dizzyingly cold so fast, or been less clear in its meaning. She rested her head against the wall and felt the small, sharp push of anguish make its way up her throat, out past her lips, clouding her sight, making her want to press her fingers hard into her eyes until every bit of light was shut out again. _Will you just go_ , she asked it. _Please..._

The sound of a gunshot made her sit up. She paused, hovering awkwardly, her hands lifted from her knees, unsure if she was supposed to get up and run, almost hoping for something to make the decision for her, when to her right a shadow appeared against the wall, and Leslie Winkle stepped into view. 

She had her back to Amy. Her weapon was raised and her shirt and lower legs were splattered with blood. She was staring down past the end of the corridor to where Amy couldn't see, seemingly locked in place, unmoving, silent. But then her shoulders dropped, and she turned and touched the wall, eyes closed. 

Amy hauled herself upright, making enough noise in the heavy silence for Leslie to spin around. For a half-second Amy found herself staring down the barrel of the shotgun.

"Hey," she said.

Leslie lowered the gun immediately. Her chest rose and fell. "You okay?" she asked quickly. Amy wiped her hands on the hem of her shirt, only then noticing how badly they were shaking. It was a shaking that travelled through the rest of her, to her throat, her voice. 

"He..." Amy swallowed and tried again. "He left..." She got no more than this, because then there were arms reaching around her, warmth against her face. She began to cry.

It was rare compassion, surprising and genuine, but almost as fast as it began they were separating again, Amy wiping at her face, Leslie glancing to the floor, her hands returning to the safety of her weapon. As much and as badly as Amy wanted to hold onto it, she knew it was pointless.

"I'm sorry." She could tell immediately that Leslie hated her saying it. Amy stared down the corridor, at the marks on the wall left by Leslie's fingers, the blood drying and already dark. Something hollow rose in her chest, making her wish they didn't have to speak at all. She took in a breath, letting it out slowly. It helped, a little. "Well. What now?"

"We're leaving," said Leslie. 

"All of us?"

They looked at one another, Amy trying not to think of what she wasn't saying, Leslie watching her carefully, taking her eyes away to scan the area, and to nod. It was an answer. It was enough.

 

-

 

The wind had picked up again, warm and still heavy with rain. But it was rain that had reduced to a threat now, and as Penny raised her eyes to the sky she found she was looking through rather than at it, searching instead of than wondering. Waiting. She had stopped listening to Howard's intermittent updates a while back. She trusted her own eyesight a whole lot more at this point.

"You'll hear it long before you see it."

Sheldon sat on a barrel. Across the roof the bright red and white of the helipad shone in the sunlight, and he squinted up at her in a way that made it hard to properly see his eyes. He had one leg stretched out, his bad leg, newly bandaged. His voice sounded tired, dampened of its usual volume, but still with that slight edge of having to get the last word in, clinging to his words in a way that made her shake her head and aim a sharp look at the top of his head. 

"I know," she said.

"Look for the change in the air—" he went on, but then he must have finally noticed her, because he made a face and glanced away. "Oh."

Penny put a hand on his shoulder, letting it fall quickly before it turned into something uncomfortable, something both of them would be forced to think about, and she turned to look at the others. They were scattered about the roof in pockets; Bernadette and Howard in a close knot at the edge of the helipad, heads bent as they listened to Howard's walkie-talkie, occasionally breaking off to exchange short bits of conversation Penny couldn't hear. In the shade of the entrance leading back into the building stood Leslie, shotgun loaded and resting against her shoulder, while Leonard knelt on his haunches nearby, his eyes on her, sometimes nodding, once giving a small half-smile that Leslie immediately scowled at. At one point his eyes found Penny's and he mouthed something, gesturing to Sheldon. Penny shrugged. She didn't want to play at pretending. 

Amy Fowler stood alone by the rail, the only one among them not looking out for the helicopter. Both Penny and Bernadette had tried to talk to her but neither had gotten more than a few words, so they let her be. What Penny had learned from Leslie were details that were sketchy at best, and maybe she didn't want to know, not really. It made her sick to her stomach and empty at once; she found she couldn't picture him, either of them; when she thought of him down there, it was somebody else, another reckless, charming, whip-smart asshole. _I'm sorry_ , she wanted to say, but _you sorry bastard_ came to her lips instead. Goodbyes were still impossible. 

She realized that Sheldon was talking, but it was a murmur she couldn't properly hear. Then the whir reached her ears, low and even, and she turned, raising a hand to her face. When the chopper emerged Penny left Sheldon and went to Amy. "Dr. Fowler," she said. The formality seemed absurd but it seemed the only thing to work. Amy turned, one hand still on the rail. Her eyes met Penny's. They were shining all over.

"Look," she said, pointing. "Dr. Malcolm, look..."

Now Howard was calling out to them, his arms waving as he and Bernadette ducked to the side. The thump and thud of the rotor came and went, making Penny's ears sting. She gripped Amy's elbow.

But Amy was insistent, so Penny gave up and followed her gaze, and soon she saw the long necks of a dozen sauropods, reaching high past the canopy. She saw the craggy, tooth-back shape of a stegosaurus emerge around a large clump of trees only to disappear again. She saw a lone raptor dart across a road and above it, a thick, unbroken flock of tiny dinosaurs she couldn't name or place, leaping from branch to branch. There was so much she hadn't seen. She didn't want to think about their fate. She wished to God they had never been born.

The noise behind her became louder, the air rushing, whipping strands of hair across her face, and then the chopper was touching down and Penny was turning, ducking against Amy alongside the rail. She tried to stare out into the gap between her elbow and her body, back to where she had spotted the stegosaurus. And she managed to get a quick glance in before being pulled away again. But it was enough to see that it was gone, that something had replaced it. Replaced, pursued, hunted. To see heavy legs thudding, the tail of the tyrannosaurus moving against the silhouette of the trees; of something physical turned to no more than sound, like the echo of a mighty roar. 

 

-

 

Days passed. For many of these he was enclosed in a hospital room in a dreamless state, occasionally waking to annoy the nursing staff and to make impossible demands that he would promptly forget. People came and went. At one point Sheldon opened his eyes and saw the back of Penny's head, blonde hair damp and still in that same messy braid, her face a soft profile as she stared out the window, but when he made to speak she crossed her arms and left the room. And then one day he was dressing himself and being led along a corridor out into brilliant light that hurt his eyes and made him sneeze. Leonard was there, and Leslie Winkle, though nether said very much. Apart from Leonard telling him that it was more like Penny irritating the nurses rather than Sheldon, but when Sheldon asked why Leonard got a funny look on his face and shrugged the question away. He rarely heard from Dr. Fowler, but he knew she was around somewhere. Some things weren't mentioned. Names, particularly. Things that should have been easy to say became hard, reactionary thoughts, turning quickly into accusations that flared and died in the same brief exchange. He seemed to be experiencing a lot of those. The same feelings, recycled, no less raw. Feelings he knew he would need to quickly get used to.

But mostly, he slept. 

It turned out that the hospital was not technically a hospital, either, but some hidden-away complex that Wheaton had built just outside of San Jose. It felt more like a private residence. Sheldon, though, had reached the point of being too tired to question much of anything, so when Leonard asked him what he thought of the place, he merely shrugged, made noises of acceptance among those of annoyance, and proceeded to sleep some more.

And it was quiet. Quiet everywhere. Soft birdsong, the sound of sprinklers, footsteps around corners. It was quiet here, too, where he lay on an overstuffed bench seat, beneath the shade of a tree. He gazed up at the branches, assigning patterns in the triangles of interwoven light to satisfy his mind when it wanted to run to desperate things. He didn't really know why. It helped.

"Dr. Cooper?"

Sheldon turned to the voice, blinking as a figure came into focus. Fine features, small build. Round eyes and a high forehead leading to a neat crop of curls. A bland and slightly anxious expression that looked like it was trying to work its way into a smile, but couldn't quite remember how. 

"Yes?"

"Stuart Bloom. I'm a...was a colleague of Rajesh's."

There was a beat. "Oh," said Sheldon. "Raj."

This time a smile did appear, but it failed to reach those round eyes. "That's right."

"I'm sorry." Sheldon glanced away. "I don't know, that is—I can't—"

"Dr. Cooper, please. It's okay. I'm not here in any official capacity. Well, not exactly, I mean, not in the way you might imagine. I just wanted to find out, if..." Bloom trailed off, clearing his throat. He took out a crumpled napkin from a pocket and wiped his mouth. His voice shook very slightly. "This is difficult. I'm making you uncomfortable."

"No, no," said Sheldon quickly. He pushed at his leg and propped a hand on the chair so that he was sitting up a little straighter. "You aren't. I just don't think I can be of help, that's all."

Bloom nodded. His fingers worked at the edge of his jacket; he was sweating hard and he ducked his head, breaking eye contact. "I suppose they haven't told you much," he said.

This made Sheldon bite his lip. "No. Not unless you count...no." 

Now it was Bloom's turn to frown. 

"What?"

"That I should forget. That it would be easier, in the long run. For myself, my work. For everyone," said Sheldon. 

Silence. He hated the words, hated saying them. It made him feel like a parrot. He winced, shifting a little as the now familiar throbbing pain made its way up his leg. It was too soon for another dose, though, so he blinked several times, swallowing hard, and looked up in time to see Bloom's expression change, betraying the fact that whatever he was about to say had been censured quietly and quickly. And done in a way Sheldon recognized, because it was something he did all too often himself. It was a habit of self-preservation. Like climbing where he feared to go, to sleep and be sung to, in the branches of a tree. Done out of necessity.

"And you believe that?" asked Bloom.

Sheldon brushed at his shirt, where a tiny leaf had fallen and clung to a buttonhole. "Maybe," he said. 

There was more he wanted to say, of course. _Maybe never_. But Bloom seemed to understand, because he nodded once and took his leave, a slight figure, walking away as silently as he'd arrived. Sheldon watched him until he was gone before letting out a slow breath. Above him the clouds were breaking up, the greyness of the morning clearing into truer color. Necessity. He focused on that one thought as it circled in his mind, before it could disappear again, and when at last he felt he had it, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes to the sun.


End file.
